Note to self: In the future, avoid alleys.
CHAPTER 20
Ginny was literally rendered speechless when I told her who The Spider was. I could sympathize. I had been dumfounded when I first found out too. And I had thought I had seen and heard everything.
Ginny’s mouth opened and closed for a few moments like a fish out of water.
“Richard Lobb is The Spider?” she finally managed to say. “But he’s one of the richest, most famous, most respected men in the world.”
“Money does not equal virtue,” I said. “In fact it’s often quite the opposite. Behind every great fortune is a great crime.” I took another bite of the sandwich Ginny had brought me. Ginny and I were eating lunch in my office. She had taken the day off from her job at Zenith Fitness to run some errands, and had volunteered to bring me lunch. I was thankful she had not volunteered to make me lunch. Ginny had many virtues, but being a good cook was not one of them. She was the only person I knew who was capable of burning water. If we got married, I would definitely be the family’s cook. The fact I from time to time caught myself thinking about marrying Ginny scared me more than facing that Metahuman with the knives had.
I was behind my desk. As it was a pleasant day, I had the window behind me open. My office was on the third floor of an office building in downtown Astor City overlooking Paper Street. The sounds of the city streamed in from the open window. I liked it. The sound of traffic and the almost electric hum the city made during the busy time of the day was like background music. I found it comforting. As I thought of Astor City as my city, it was the sound of home. Ginny was in front of me, seated in one of my four client chairs. I could not remember the last time I had four clients in my office all at the same time. When it happened, I was ready. Build it and they will come. If I ever decided to get out of the Hero and detective business and started a company that made vibrators, Build it and they will come would be my company’s motto.
Ginny was eating a tuna fish salad sandwich. When I ate a tuna fish salad sandwich, some of tuna fish inevitably ended up on my clothes. Ginny said I was a sloppy eater. I preferred the term enthusiastic. Ginny’s clothes did not have a speck of her sandwich on them. She looked resplendent in a loose canary yellow blouse, tight black pants, and flats. As always, she made casual clothes look like the height of chic. My throat tightened as I looked at her. I was definitely in love. Either that or coming down with strep throat. I glimpsed a hint of milky white cleavage every time she leaned forward in her chair to take another bite of her sandwich. I suspected she was not wearing a bra. The issue definitely merited further investigation. I did my best to keep my investigatory skills finely honed through constant practice. Perhaps after I finished eating my own sandwich—roast beef on whole wheat with mustard, dill pickles, and kale—Ginny would let me have her for dessert. Dessert was the most important meal of the day. Some people said it was actually breakfast. Some people had never had never laid eyes on Ginny.
The numbness of both my right hand and my left side had completely worn off a few hours after my encounter with the knife-wielding Meta. Thank goodness! If I had to eat my sandwich with just my left hand, it would probably look like a sandwich had exploded on my face. Choking supervillains would be much harder with just my left hand. I would have said that choking the chicken would be harder too, but I was far too dignified a Hero to be so vulgar.
As the numbness was gone, the only remaining souvenirs I had of my run-in with the knife-wielding Meta were a bandaged right hand and a scabbed-over cut on my left side. I rather hoped that both cuts would leave scars. If it looked like you had been in a knife fight, it made it easier to avoid getting into future knife fights. The more fearsome you looked, the less inclined people were to mess with you. For that reason, if my nose had not already been broken several times and my ears were not already slightly cauliflowered, I would have made it a point to take a bat to my own head. Better that I do it myself than to have some thug try to do it for me because my unmarred face made me look like an easy target. An ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure.
I probed with my tongue at a piece of kale that had gotten wedged between my teeth. “You know, I’m not a big fan of kale,” I said. “But, I hear it is a superfood. Since I am a superhero, maybe it will help augment my powers.”
“Makes total sense,” Ginny said with mock seriousness. “Is the kale making you feel more powerful yet?”
I thought about it.
“So far, no. Maybe I’m consuming it wrong. Maybe kale needs to be rubbed on the skin instead of eating it to activate its powers. Or, maybe the trick to activating those powers is to take the leaves, ball them up, and throw them in the trash.”
“You should try that next time.”
Even with the kale tainting it, the roast beef was tasty. It was piled high on the bread, thickly sliced, and a bit bloody. I suspected the deli Ginny had gotten the sandwich from had merely pried the hooves off a cow and then slapped it onto a sandwich. I did not mind. I would eat anything as long as it was dead or, if I was hungry enough, merely moving slowly.
A lot had happened in the days since I had left Kierra Singleton’s brownstone. I had filled Ginny in on all of it when she arrived for lunch. The first thing I did after I left Kierra’s was to run the license plate number on the car that had nearly run me down with the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. Ordinary citizens could not demand vehicle registration information from the government, but us licensed Heroes by law had certain police powers. Getting vehicle registration information was but one of them. Rank had its privileges.
It turned out the car had been reported stolen the day before. Of course. I had people try to run me over before. They had always used stolen cars. Not that I enjoyed people trying to turn me into roadkill, but if they just had to do it, I wished they had the decency to use their own cars so they would be easy to identify and locate afterwards. Cagey bastards.
The car that had nearly run me over was a dead end. The video Kierra Singleton had given me of the teleporting Metahuman who visited her was not. I watched the video and, as Kierra had indicated, the teleporting Meta was on it as clear as day. I did not recognize him. Of course not. It would have been way too easy if I had recognized the guy and knew where I could lay my hands on him. If there was one thing I knew about this business, it was that it was rarely easy. So, I had contacted the Heroes’ Guild. Under the Hero Act, every Metahuman was required to register with the federal government, whether they planned on using their powers or not. Being an unregistered Metahuman was illegal; a non-Hero using his powers—whether he was registered or not—was also illegal. Unfortunately, supervillains tended to not being sticklers about following the law. The word “villain” was right there in their name, after all.
In addition to the U.S. Department of Metahuman Affairs keeping a record of all registered Metahumans, the Heroes’ Guild did as well. Though the identity of registered Metas was kept confidential in the interest of protecting Metas’ privacy, that confidentiality could be lifted if there was evidence a registered Meta had used his powers to commit a crime. The teleporting Meta had clearly done so by threatening Kierra and her mother: it was there on the video in crystal-clear sound and color. I had taken the video to the Heroes’ Guild to see if the teleporting Meta was registered. I hoped he was, but I feared he was not. The Guild ran its facial recognition software on the video and came back with a result. To my shock and delight, it turned out the Meta was registered. His name was Jonathan Strayhorn, though he also went by the street name Antaeus. He lived in Maine. So, I hopped on a plane and paid Antaeus a visit. First New York, then Maine. I was Truman the Traveler. If I kept this up, perhaps I would buy myself a private jet to ferry me around. I would need a name for it, of course. All superhero transports had names. Mine could be the Aqua Airship. No, that lacked a certain something. The Liquid Learjet? No, also no good. Maybe I should avoid alliteration altogether. If it had stealth capabilities, I could cal
l it the Invisible Jet. No, that name was already taken. I did not want to get sued for trademark infringement. If I actually had an Invisible Jet though, good luck in finding me and serving me with the lawsuit. I would start calling myself the Invisible Man as well even though the name was already in use as a book title. If I was going to invite one lawsuit, why not just go ahead and open the floodgates?
You have read at the beginning of my tale how I found Antaeus in Maine and persuaded him to tell me what he knew. By “persuaded,” I of course meant I threatened to throw him off the side of a mountain. Unfortunately, I wound up having to jump off the side of the same mountain after him after he slipped out of my grasp. Being a Hero was not for the faint of heart. Or for the acrophobic. Antaeus’ confession was how I knew The Spider had hired Antaeus to pay off John Barrow to tell Antaeus about MetaHold’s security systems and protocols regarding Chaos. Antaeus did not know how The Spider knew Barrow would be amenable to bribery, but he somehow did. The Spider had provided the money Antaeus paid to Barrow, and later, Kierra. The Spider had told Antaeus to threaten Kierra and pay her money to help insure her silence when it looked like she was going to blow the whistle. The Spider had provided to Antaeus the device Antaeus had used to capture some of Chaos’ energy, and had instructed Antaeus on the device’s use. Antaeus said he had no idea what The Spider planned on using the Chaos energy for. I bet I did thanks to Avatar’s video and how he wound up getting killed by ordinary bullets that should have just bounced off his chest harmlessly. After collecting the Chaos energy, Antaeus had returned the device to The Spider as he had been instructed. Or, more accurately, he had returned the device to one of The Spider’s intermediaries. Antaeus had always dealt with one or more of The Spider’s intermediaries, and never with the man himself. Brass had told me the same story about his dealings with The Spider. Antaeus and The Spider had never actually met and The Spider had been careful to conceal his true identity from Antaeus. But, it was hard to keep a secret from a teleporter, to whom a locked door was no impediment and to whom any spot in the world was simply an eyeblink away. When Antaeus was first approached by minions of The Spider about The Spider hiring him, curiosity about who was willing to pay him so much money to get access to Chaos had gotten the better of him. He had done some investigating and, with the judicious use of his powers, discovered that The Spider was none other than Richard Lobb.
Richard Lobb was, in his own way, as powerful as, as famous as, and as much of an icon as Avatar had been. Lobb was the founder and chief executive officer of UWant. UWant had started years ago as a computer algorithm Lobb, a math and computer science major, had fiddled around with when he was in college. When a professor had pointed out the commercial implications of the algorithm, Lobb raised the seed money to turn UWant into a commercial enterprise. Essentially, UWant was a search engine like Google. But, UWant did not merely find the information you searched for on the Internet. It also anticipated, by monitoring your online history and the vast amount of information available about you in the public domain, questions that you had not even formulated yet. UWant was like Google if Google could read your mind. Google had been the world’s dominant search engine until UWant had come into bursting onto the scene. Now UWant was most people’s go-to search engine, including mine. UWant’s success had made Lobb as rich as Midas, as respected as the Pope, as famous as Kim Kardashian, and several times better connected. Unlike Kardashian, Lobb had not even needed to make a sex tape to catapult him into the public consciousness. It was just as well. Though Lobb was a handsome man, he was not my type. I would have hated to watch a Lobb sex tape in furtherance of my investigation. Kardashian had not committed any crimes I knew of, but I had carefully watched her sex tape anyway. If she ever committed a crime I might be called on to investigate, I wanted to be ready. Readiness is all.
“Why not turn Antaeus over to the authorities?” Ginny asked. “If what he told you is true, he can help prove there’s a link between Richard Lobb and Avatar’s murder.” I shook my head.
“I can’t do that. He teleported away after I got the info I told you about out of him. I can’t seem to find him again. He could literally be anywhere in the world.”
“Do you really think Lobb killed Avatar?” Ginny asked. She seemed to have a hard time wrapping her head around the concept.
“I have no idea. He clearly is connected to this whole thing somehow. As The Spider, he had Brass keep a watch on Sentinels’ mansion. He hired Antaeus to get into MetaHold to siphon some of Chaos’ energy. It seems pretty clear that energy was used to permit bullets to pierce Avatar’s otherwise impenetrable body. Not only that, but Brass told me The Spider was the person who help him get and maintain a stranglehold on the prostitution business. Even if Lobb did not kill Avatar, he is a criminal.” I shook my head. “Lobb is a pillar of the business community. Hell, he’s a pillar of the community, period. There are rumors he’s laying the groundwork to run for President.”
“Exactly what the country needs—another crook in office.”
“And Lobb has managed to keep his crookedness completely hidden. I keep my ear pretty close to the ground as far as what’s going on in the criminal underworld. I did not hear even a whisper about The Spider—much less the fact that Lobb is The Spider—until I started digging into Avatar’s death. I wonder if Lobb is the one who had that Meta with the knives stake out Kierra’s place. Maybe Lobb was keeping an eye on Kierra to make sure she did not spill the beans about Antaeus gaining access to Chaos.”
“So what’s your next move?” Ginny had finished eating. Not even a crumb marred her outfit. I looked down. I could not say the same. On the upside, I could have the crumbs on my clothes for a snack later.
“Well, since Richard Lobb is The Spider, and The Spider is clearly mixed up somehow in Avatar’s death, I thought I would go see Mr. Lobb and have a friendly chat with him.” I shrugged. “Besides, I don’t know what else to do. I already tried sticking my head out the window and asking whoever killed Avatar to come turn himself in. No one did.”
“It’s shocking that didn’t work,” Ginny said with a smile. Then she grew sober. “Be careful with Mr. Lobb. Even before we knew he was this Spider character, he was still one of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet. He hobnobs with presidents, prime ministers, kings, and the elite of the elite. Even if it turns out he did not kill Avatar, he’s still dangerous.”
“Perhaps you haven’t heard. I’m a licensed Hero. We laugh in the face of danger. Besides I’m plenty dangerous myself. ‘My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.’”
“Shakespeare?”
“Tennyson. Right country, though. Speaking of the English, here’s a fun fact: Lobb is from an Old English word that means spider.”
“Richard Lobb has a secret alias called The Spider, and his very name means spider?” Ginny shook her head. “Talk about hiding in plain sight. How did you know the origin of Lobb, by the way?”
I shrugged.
“Didn’t you hear me before? I’m a Hero,” I said, as if that explained everything. Ginny eyed me suspiciously.
“You looked it up online, didn’t you?” she asked. I did not dignify her impertinent question with a response. The fact that I did look it up online did not make her question any less hurtful.
“I wonder if Richard goes by Dick,” I mused thoughtfully.
“Dick Lobb?” Ginny’s blue eyes swam with amusement. “Oh God, I hope not.”
“Agreed. Dick Lobb sounds like an Olympic sport, albeit an exclusively masculine and painful one.”
Ginny cocked an eyebrow up.
“Albeit? That’s quite a word for someone who looks like you do. First you quote Alfred Tennyson, now this.” The look of amusement was still in Ginny’s eyes.
“Yes, albeit. They don’t hand out Heroes’ licenses to just any unlettered knuckle dragger, you know. Not only am I a death-defying adventurer, I am also a gentleman and a scholar.”
“I see.
Do all gentlemen and scholars have mustard smears on their chins?”
I dabbed at my chin with a napkin. It came away yellow.
“No. Just us Heroes who are grappling with weighty matters and don’t have time for minutiae. It’s not terribly gentlemanly of you to point the mustard out by the way. This is why you’ll never be a Hero.”
“That and I don’t have powers,” she said.
“Not true. You have the power to make objects hard. As it turns out, you’re doing it right now.”
“Is that so?” Ginny grinned at me wickedly. I imagined it was the same grin Eve had flashed at Adam to convince him to take a bite of the apple. Ginny stood. She stepped around my desk and stood between my legs. She leaned over, checking with her hand to see if I had been kidding. I had not been. Her grin grew even broader.
“A hard man is good to find,” Ginny said. “It would be a shame to let the effects of my superpowers go to waste.” She pulled her blouse off with one smooth motion. Mystery solved: Ginny was not wearing a bra. If a thousand ships were around, they surely would have launched at the sight of her. If the secretaries in the law office across the street were looking this way, they would be shocked. Jealous, too. Few women looked at good as Ginny. None looked better.
My heart hammered in my chest. I reached up, pulling Ginny into my lap.
“Waste not, want not,” I agreed. I kissed her.
If they were watching, I hoped the ladies across the street enjoyed the show that unfolded.
I certainly I did.
CHAPTER 21
Getting a meeting with Richard Lobb was easy. Too easy.
My experience was that, the more important someone was, the more people you had to go through to speak with that someone directly. If one were to call the President of the United States for example, you would have to first make your way through a host of intermediaries before you got to the man himself, assuming you ever did. On the other hand, I was easy to get a hold of. Someone could merely walk into my office or call me directly as I was listed in the phone book. Did that lack of red tape to reach me mean I was not important? Maybe, maybe not. Every rule had its exception.
Superhero Detective Series (Book 4): Hunted Page 23
