I had supposed that getting an audience with a man as rich and important as Richard Lobb would be as difficult as getting one with the President. I was wrong. Sitting in my office, I placed a call to Lobb’s corporate headquarters. Once I identified myself, it was as if I had spoken a magic word. I was immediately transferred to a woman named Donna Marina, Lobb’s executive secretary. When the man I spoke to told me he was transferring me to Ms. Marina, he made it sound like she was Saint Peter and Lobb was God. Well, at least I had made it to the Pearly Gates.
I made an appointment with Ms. Marina to meet with Lobb. From when I first picked up the phone to call Lobb’s headquarters to securing the appointment to meet with him, I had been on the phone for maybe ten minutes. I had mostly expected to be given the runaround and be bounced from person to person in the layers of bureaucracy surrounding Lobb before I got to someone who would finally tell me that Lobb was a far too busy and important man to meet with a relative nobody like me. They would not come right out and call me a nobody, of course, but they would say it without saying it. Corporate and government bureaucrats were so good at politely brushing people off that it almost seemed like a superpower. Yeah, but could they shoot left-handed and use water to fight supervillains? Checkmate bureaucrats. Checkmate.
Anyway, I had expected I would be told Lobb could not meet with me, and that I would have to stage my own informal meeting by breaking into his house or business. That would be a tall order as Lobb no doubt had security that made the Secret Service look like amateurs. But, if this job had been easy, the Sentinels would not have needed to hire me.
No breaking and entering was necessary. In fact, it rather felt like the red carpet was being rolled out for me in light of how quickly I was transferred to Ms. Marina and how readily she made an appointment for me to meet with her boss. It made me suspicious. If there was one thing classical literature had taught me, it was to beware Greeks bearing gifts. I was so surprised by how easy it was to get an appointment to see Lobb that I asked Ms. Marina why that was.
“Mr. Lobb told me weeks ago you would likely be calling to make an appointment to meet with him,” she said in response. She sounded amused by the question, like I had asked how God knew how many grains of sand there were on the beach. Because he is God. Duh, Ms. Marina’s tone seemed to imply despite its professionalism.
“Well I wish Mr. Lobb had called me weeks ago to make an appointment with me, then. It certainly would have saved me a lot of time and trouble.” I glanced down at my bandaged right hand. “My chicken choker could have been permanently ruined.”
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind. I look forward to seeing Mr. Lobb.” We said goodbye to each other and hung up.
I spun around in my chair and put my feet up on the windowsill. The position helped me think. The position also sometimes helped me go to sleep. Today I had too many things to ponder to nap. Though my window was closed today, the blinds were opened. The secretaries across the way flitted in and out of my view through their window. I wondered if they had seen the show Ginny and I had put on yesterday. No, I supposed they had not. If they had, surely one or more of them would have walked over here before now in hopes of an encore performance. Or at least to shake my hand—or other parts—in congratulation.
More importantly, I wondered how Lobb had known I would be calling to meet with him. If he had a crystal ball, I would have loved to borrow it the way Shadow sometime borrowed other people’s cars. Yes, a Hero should not be stealing things, but think of all the crimes I could solve with a working crystal ball. The ends justified the means.
As I had discussed with Ginny, clearly Lobb was involved with Avatar’s death somehow. The question was exactly to what extent. Had he actually pulled the trigger that killed Avatar? Had someone else done it on his behalf? Or had Lobb merely provided the Chaos energy to someone else who then used it to kill Avatar? Regardless of whether Lobb killed Avatar himself or had someone else do it, to what end? Now that I thought about it, maybe Lobb had not intended to use the Chaos energy on Avatar at all. Maybe he obtained it for some other reason I could not even begin to guess at, and it had fallen into the hands of someone else who then used it against Avatar.
I had a lot of questions, and few answers. Unfortunately, it was a situation I was used to. That did not mean I had grown to like it.
CHAPTER 22
What does one wear to meet with one of the richest and most influential men on the planet? A tuxedo? If I said mine was at the cleaners, that would be a lie. I did not own one. The need to wear a tux did not come up terribly often in my line of work. Maybe I needed to contend with a better class of supervillains.
I settled on grey dress slacks, slip-on black leather loafers, a light blue long-sleeve shirt, and a dark blue blazer. Just so Lobb would not think I was meeting with him to interview for a job, I added a shoulder holster and gun to the ensemble. I put the holster on under the blazer. Wearing it over the blazer seemed overly aggressive.
UWant corporate headquarters was housed in the UWant building. Naturally. The UWant building was in the center of Astor City, not too far from my office. In fact, if I stuck my head out of my office window and looked to the left, I could see the UWant building. It towered over the rest of the cityscape. At a little under eighteen hundred feet tall, it was the tallest building not only in Astor City, but in the entire country. I had walked and driven past it countless times, but I had never been inside. I walked to it the day of my appointment with Lobb.
The building was so wide that it was hard to tell what it was shaped like when you were close to it. I had seen it from the air before and I knew it was oval-shaped, like a one hundred and ten story tall egg. The opaque glass facade of the building glittered green in the sun, as if it were made out of emeralds, not glass. Heck, for all I knew it was emeralds. UWant made that much money. If it was emeralds, I wondered if anyone minded me cutting out a chunk of it and taking it back to my office with me. Ammunition was expensive.
The inside of the building was as impressive as the outside. The welcome desk was located in a barrel vaulted atrium that extended upwards for at least thirty stories. The directory mounted on the wall next to the desk informed me that approximately the bottom half of the building was occupied by various non-UWant businesses. The upper half was occupied by UWant and some of its related enterprises. The directory did not tell me where Lobb’s office was though. I was not deterred. I was a professional detective. I would use my finely honed detecting abilities to track him down.
I turned to the welcome desk. Two young women who looked like they spent their weekends modelling were seated behind it. One was a brunette, the other blonde. They smiled at me broadly but somewhat artificially, as if they had been programmed to do so. Maybe if I had worn a tuxedo they would have been more impressed and their smiles would have been more genuine. I would remember that for next time.
“Where can I find Richard Lobb’s office?” I asked. Even I was impressed by my relentless detecting skills.
“Mr. Lobb’s office is on the penthouse level,” the brunette said. There was a trace of Eastern Europe in her voice. Russia, maybe. “But he is a very busy man. He only can see people if they have an appointment.” Despite the smile still on her face, there was a whiff of a tone in her voice that led me to think she did not believe someone with a busted up face and a bandaged right hand could possibly have an appointment to meet with the great and mighty Mr. Lobb. Wearing a tuxedo seemed a better and better idea.
I smiled back at her.
“I do have an appointment with him, which is scheduled to begin in fifteen minutes. My name is Truman Lord.” I almost said I was Truman the Timely, but that was not the name I had the appointment under. I did not want to confuse the poor girl. She looked dubious about me having an appointment. I smiled even wider and with reassurance, but held back a little. If I flashed her my full wattage smile, she might succumb to my charms, leap over the desk, and sexually assault me. I did not w
ant to get my blazer wrinkled. I had just gotten it out of the dry cleaner.
The woman reached under her desk and typed into a keyboard hidden there. She consulted with a screen recessed into the desk. She looked up with a bright smile. All doubt was now gone.
“Welcome to the UWant building, Mr. Lord,” she said. The merely polite and professional greeting I had gotten before was now replaced with genuine warmth and undisguised interest. If I merited an appointment with the great and powerful Mr. Lobb, clearly I was somebody despite the fact I had a face that looked like it had been in a fight with a grizzly bear. “You will want to take the elevator to the one hundredth floor, the highest this bank of elevators will go, and check in with security. From there they will direct you to Mr. Lobb’s office.”
I thanked her. I walked over to the gold-plated elevator doors, feeling the brunette’s eyes on me as I did so. If she knew I was a poor Hero and not the captain of industry she now probably thought I was based on my appointment with Lobb, perhaps she would have not looked at me so hungrily. If the mere fact of a meeting with Lobb could change a woman’s attitude so dramatically, what must it have been like to have been Lobb himself? He must have swum to work in a sea of gold diggers’ panties. Tough life.
It took a while—long enough for me to grow bored despite the fact I was on my way to meet with a murder suspect—but I finally made it to the hundredth floor. I was grateful for my own third floor office. I did not want to spend my prime crime-fighting years riding in elevators. The elevator ride would have been long enough had there not been stops, but there were several as people on various floors got on and got off. Most of people were very prosperous looking and appeared like they could buy and sell me. Yeah, but how many of them had a cool looking scar caused by shooting themselves in the ear? Not a single one. I tried to smother my feeling of smug superiority. Arrogance ill-suited a death-defying, battle-scarred Hero.
When I finally disembarked the elevator on the hundredth floor, I was greeted by two burly men, one black, one white. Cops, bouncers, soldiers, and security guards all tended to have the same no-nonsense demeanor and body language, with only the outfits varying. These guys had that same look. They were dressed in black suits and white shirts with black ties. Their suit jackets were unbuttoned, and guns were at their hips. They took my identification and examined it carefully against their appointment book when I told them I had a meeting with Mr. Lobb.
“We have to search you before you can meet with Mr. Lobb,” the black one said. “Are you carrying any weapons?” His hand was near the pistol at his hip. He asked the question while looking pointedly at the left side of my blazer were my gun was holstered. My blazer was tailored to help conceal the bulge of my gun. The guy had a good eye.
“I have a pistol under my jacket on the left side,” I said. “I have a license for it.”
“License or no license, you can’t carry it with you when you meet with Mr. Lobb,” the man said. “You’ll have to check it here.” I did not like going around unarmed, especially when I would be meeting with someone who was somehow involved in Avatar’s death. The alternative to surrendering my weapon was to draw it and shoot the two security guards and anyone else who got in my way between here and the penthouse. Such a reaction seemed a bit like overkill—literally—not to mention frowned on by the police and the Heroes’ Guild. Spoilsports.
Moving slowly since both guards’ hands hovered near their holstered weapons, I pulled my gun out of its holster using just my thumb and forefinger. I handed it to the black guard. He locked it in a small safe, saying I could retrieve it when Lobb had finished with me. That was just how he said it—when Lobb had finished with me. The thought that I could finish with Lobb before he had finished with me did not seem to have occurred to the guard. Elitist and insulting. Then again, I was not paying the guard’s salary.
As the white guard hung back, watching me attentively with his hand still hovering near his gun, the black guard waved an electronic wand over me. The wand did not alert him to anything dangerous I was carrying. It was a good thing I had left my bazooka at home. Apparently the wand was not enough to satisfy the man, though. He proceeded to pat me down. He did a far more thorough job of frisking me than the bouncer outside Spread Legs did. I have had less invasive medical exams.
“If you’re gonna touch me like that, at least have the decency to buy me dinner first,” I said. Neither man laughed, cracked a smile, or offered to buy me dinner. Tough crowd.
Once the men had assured themselves I was as weaponless as a newborn, all three of us got into a different elevator. It was a much shorter elevator ride from the security level to the penthouse level. Thank God. It was one thing to die at the hands of a supervillain. That was the risk you ran in my business. To die of boredom was a whole different kettle of fish. “He died of boredom,” would not look good on a Hero’s tombstone. Embarrassing.
We exited the elevator at the top floor. The white guard was in front; the black guard walked after me watchfully. Perhaps he thought I might steal something. The huge room we were in looked like a set from a science fiction movie, sparsely furnished but futuristic. Everything was chrome and glass and silver-hued. There were four transparent desks behind which sat two men and two women, all of whom were attractive enough to be actors. They were all intently typing furiously on their computers like their lives depended on it. I wondered how they would have reacted if I fired a gun into the air. Then I remembered my gun had been confiscated. I wondered if the guards who were escorting me to the end of the wide room would let me borrow theirs.
“You all conducting a typing contest up here?” I said to the black guard.
“These are Mr. Lobb’s personal secretaries.”
“Well tell them to slow down. I’m developing carpal tunnel syndrome just watching them.”
We got to the other end of the room where a fifth person sat behind another transparent desk, this one larger than the others. There was crystal clear glass from floor to ceiling here instead of a wall, affording a spectacular view of the city. We were so high up, the rest of Astor City looked like an abstract painting below us. It felt like if I squinted at the horizon, I would be able to make out Great Britain. I was careful to not let my jaw drop at the sight of the view. I was supposed to be a Hero, not yokel.
The view was so spectacular that I did not at first pay any attention to the person behind the desk we now stood in front of.
“Mr. Truman, this is Donna Marina, Mr. Lobb’s executive secretary,” the white guard said. “Ms. Marina, Mr. Truman has an appointment with Mr. Lobb.” I tore my attention away from the view, and looked at Ms. Marina. My jaw almost dropped again. I had seen Ms. Marina before. I kept my face neutral with effort.
Ms. Marina stood. With a glance, she took in the fact my right hand was bandaged, and without hesitation she extended her left hand in greeting. I hesitated for a moment before I recovered from my surprise at the sight of her. I extended my left hand as well and shook hers. Her grip was cool and firm. As her desk was transparent glass, I could see her entire body. She had slicked down, shoulder-length blonde hair and long, slender, strong-looking legs. She was just a couple of inches shorter than I in her high heels. She wore an outfit the price of which probably could have paid my mortgage for a couple of months. An antique looking gold ring hung on a simple silver necklace right above the swell of her breasts. Her face was subtly but exquisitely made-up, and her hands were well-manicured. The nails of both were painted a muted red. They matched the color of her heels. Her eyes were the color of a crisp fall sky. She looked like someone straight out of the pages of a fashion magazine.
“I’m very pleased to meet you Mr. Lord,” Ms. Marina said. Her eyes sparkled with intelligence. She glanced at my bandaged right hand again. “If you don’t mind me asking, what did you do to your hand?”
“I cut myself shaving.”
Her brow furrowed a bit. “On the palm of your hand?”
“I’m a very enthusiast
ic shaver. Things get a little out of hand sometimes.”
Ms. Marina smiled. Her teeth were white and even. I would have been shocked had it been otherwise.
“I suspect you are pulling my leg.”
“Maybe a little. Fortunately for you, because my hand is injured, I can’t pull very hard.”
“Then I will indeed count myself fortunate. Follow me. Mr. Lobb is ready to see you.” She stepped from behind her desk, walking towards an oversized dark door. I admired the curves of her body as she walked. Normally I did that as a matter of course; one never knew where a clue might be lurking. This time I felt a little guilty about it.
“Cover me boys, I’m going in,” I murmured to the guards who still stood with me in front of Ms. Marina’s desk. The mouth of the black one twitched a little. By the end of the day, I would have him eating out of the palm of my hand.
I followed Ms. Marina to the door. She opened it, and we stepped inside. I thought the rest of the building was something, but it had nothing on Lobb’s office. If Roman emperors had kept offices, I imagined this was what they might have looked like.
Lobb’s office took up the rest of the penthouse floor not occupied by the large room his secretaries were in. Three sides of the huge office were floor to ceiling glass, just like the wall Ms. Marina’s desk was by. The fourth wall, the one Lobb’s secretaries were on the other side of, was lined with books. I had been to libraries with smaller collections. The ceiling was painted to look like that of the Sistine Chapel. To my admittedly untrained artistic eye, it looked like Michelangelo himself had been resurrected to do the work. To the far right was a work desk near one of the glass walls behind which sat Lobb. The rest of the office looked like a living room straight out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
Superhero Detective Series (Book 4): Hunted Page 24
