“Why not just tell George to go pound sand?” I asked. “You’re not the first person in the history of the world to have an affair. If you and Paul are happily married, I’m sure he will forgive you. As for your board, why the hell would they care about whom you sleep with?”
“If it was just conventional sex on the recordings, I might do just that,” Eileen said. Her lips tightened in embarrassment. “But, unfortunately, George and I have been very, how shall I say, experimental. BDSM, watersports, scat, blood play, that kind of thing.”
Eileen’s eyes met mine. She was watching to see how I reacted to her words. I kept my face neutral. But, I was surprised to hear that Eileen, who looked like she should be the head of the city’s Rotary Club and like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, was into things like watersports, scat, and blood play. Yikes! Having not grown bored with conventional sex yet, I had not ventured much past the simple concept of slipping rod A into slot B.
But, Eileen’s words just served to confirm something I already knew: everyone was a freak. Some of us just hid it better than others.
“So, I would prefer to keep Paul and the university board in the dark about my extracurricular activities. Paul would be both hurt and irate, especially since he has been complaining for years about our bedroom situation. As for the board—” Eileen shook her head at the thought of it. “They would not be forgiving. Frankly, I wouldn’t be either if I were in their position. They would hate a scandal. Part of their and my job is to avoid anything that might harm recruiting or, God forbid, fundraising. I am the public face of the school. I would lose my job for sure.”
Eileen’s face tightened in resolve.
“I’m the youngest person to ever be the president of this institution and the first woman. I worked too hard for too long to give this job up without a fight,” she said.
“Okay then, how about door number two?” I said. “Why not pay George off?”
Eileen shook her head.
“I’m well paid, but I still can’t afford the kind of money George is asking for. Paul and I keep our finances separate and only combine them to deal with joint bills such as the house, utilities, et cetera. He runs the company his grandfather started and he would be able to afford the money George is asking for. But, if I ask Paul for the money, he’ll want to know why.”
“And there you are, back at door number one,” I said.
She nodded.
“Exactly. Plus, even if I pay George, what’s to stop him from shaking me down for more money in the future?” she asked.
“And so that’s why you contacted me. To get George to stop blackmailing you,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “Will you take the job?”
“Sure,” I said.
CHAPTER 3
I was still seated in Eileen’s office discussing her situation with George Chase. We paused our talk when Eileen’s secretary came in to bring coffee for both of us. The secretary smiled shyly at me when she put my cup down in front of me. I was tempted to ask her if she was into watersports too, but it did not seem to be the right time or place.
“Any thoughts on how you will get George to stop blackmailing me?” Eileen asked once her secretary had left and closed the office door behind herself.
“First,” I said, “I’ll use sweet reason on him.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
“Then perhaps I’ll punch him in the face until he’s more amenable to sweet reason.”
Eileen shifted in her seat.
“You would do that?” she asked.
“If I have to,” I said. “I’ll play it by ear.”
Eileen’s eyes shone brightly.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing that,” she said. She seemed very excited—almost too excited—at the prospect.
Yep, everyone is a freak.
“Why me?” I asked. “Any number of tough guys could probably do this job for you. Though not with my panache, of course. My understanding is you were looking specifically for someone with powers. Why?”
“Oh God,” Eileen said. “Finally getting this all off of my chest made me forget an important detail. George is a Meta.”
“Aha,” I said.
“Aha?”
“Yes, ‘aha’ is a term of art we professional detectives and ass-kickers use. Loosely translated, it means, ‘I see.’”
Eileen smiled at me again.
“You’re funny,” she said.
“Thanks. Not everyone thinks so.” It was a shame Eileen was married. It was an even greater shame about the kinds of things she was into. BDSM I could deal with. But scat? Urine? Blech!
“What are George’s powers?” I asked her.
“His powers are how he recorded our encounters together. I didn’t even know he was a Meta until he confronted me about the money. His brain apparently records everything he senses. And then he can project a three dimensional holographic image of it later.” She shuddered. “It’s freaky. He showed me a few scenes from when we were together. It’s very weird to watch yourself in flagrante delicto. It was like reliving the sex, only from George’s perspective.”
I got all of the information I could out of Eileen about George. It was not much. She had a cell phone number for him, but not a number for a land line. She did not know where George was born, his date of birth, or exactly what he did for a living. She did not even know where he lived, though she was under the vague impression he lived somewhere on the south side of town. Eileen revealed she and George always had their liaisons in hotel rooms. As we spoke, it became clear to both me and her that she really knew very little about George.
“God, I feel like such a fool not knowing even basic facts about the man I’ve been sharing a bed with,” Eileen said with a rueful head shake.
“Sometimes the body just wants what it wants,” I said, trying to make her feel better. I was starting to think that, in light of how little Eileen really knew about him, if George Chase was really that guy’s name, I would dig out and eat my cape.
“I do have a picture of him, though,” Eileen said. “I snuck a pic of him when he was asleep once.” She picked up her cellphone. After tapping on it for a bit, she handed it to me.
“Yowzah!” I said.
“I know, right?” Eileen responded. She sounded almost smug, as if she were personally responsible for the piece of flesh I was looking at. I should have said “horseflesh” as that was more evocative of the size of the anatomical part which jumped out at me.
George was sprawled naked and face up on the bed in the picture. His genitals were visible. They might have also been visible from the Moon they were so big. After I got over the shock of the size of the man’s equipment, I took a good look at his face. He appeared to be in his early thirties. He was on the slim side, but he was also muscular and clearly kept himself in good shape. His tousled dark hair was cut short.
“Email this to me please,” I said to Eileen as I handed her phone back to her. It was the first—and hopefully the last—time I had ever requested a dick pic. Eileen nodded.
After I got all of the information I was going to out of Eileen, I started to stand up to leave.
“Wait,” she said. “Before you go, will you show me what you can do?”
“Ah, you want to see my biceps after all. I knew you would not be able to resist my charms for long.”
“You know what I mean,” she said. Her eyes shone with curiosity.
Indeed I did. Frankly I was surprised it had taken Eileen that long to ask me to show her my powers. Metahumans were not exactly a dime a dozen, and licensed Heroes even less so.
There were water pipes running behind the wall behind Eileen’s desk, plus others that ran above the ceiling. I had sensed and made note of them out of habit when I initially walked into Eileen’s office. I never knew when I might have need of a water source. But, I did not think Eileen would much enjoy me using my powers to burst those pipes to get some water out.
So, instead I focused my mind
on the open glass of water Eileen had on her desk. As Eileen watched in fascination, I raised my right hand theatrically. The hand motion was entirely unnecessary as my powers were controlled by my mind, but I liked to put on a show. At my mind’s command, simultaneously with the raising of my hand, the water rose out of the glass. I molded and shaped the water around a pocket of air with my mind as I gestured slightly with my raised hand. Within seconds, the water took the form of a dragon. From snout to tail it was a little over two feet long. I could have shaped the water into absolutely anything, but I had just finished a fantasy novel the night before. The thought of dragons was fresh in my mind.
The dragon raised its head and opened its jaws in a silent roar. Then, it took off flying, flapping its batlike wings as it circled the room. It was not really flying, of course, as it was being supported in the air entirely by my mind.
As Eileen watched transfixed, I had my water dragon fly around the room a few times. Then, with a flick of my wrist, I made it land on her desk. The dragon opened its mouth. It breathed out a jet of water towards the empty glass it had come out of. The water jet looked like a stream of watery fire. Simultaneously, I dropped the temperature of the water that composed the dragon. As the watery jet of flame extended towards the glass, the water crystallized with small cracking sounds into ice. Right as the jet touched the glass, I allowed the ice to completely harden. The ice dragon then looked like a clear glass figurine sitting on Eileen’s desk.
Eileen stared at the dragon on her desk. Her face was filled with wonder. She then looked at me.
“Hydrokinesis,” she said. “Plus temperature control. Wow!”
I tried to look modest.
“Wow? Yeah, I get that a lot.”
CHAPTER 4
Three days later I sat at my desk in my office. I held a check in my hand. I was looking at it admiringly. The check was made out to me, and it was from a client I had handled a matter for to his satisfaction. The client had been so satisfied, he unexpectedly paid me a bonus over and above my agreed upon fee. The bonus was included on the check.
I had plenty of satisfied clients. Satisfied clients who paid me a bonus were rare, however. I was tempted to frame the check and mount it on my office wall as a testimonial to future clients of my good work and as an inspiration to myself to maintain high standards. But, the check was for a large amount, and one could not eat testimonials. Sources of inspiration are great, but you can take inspiration too far.
I endorsed the check with relish, and set it aside. I could not rest on my laurels. What the heck was a laurel, anyway? I had traveled pretty extensively, and not once had I encountered a laurel. If I did, it probably wouldn’t occur to me to rest on it. If it made any sudden movements, I might shoot it instead.
I settled down to mull over Eileen’s case. I had waited three days to start work on Eileen’s matter because I had a couple of other cases to attend to first. Plus, I always liked to have a client’s initial payment clear the bank before I began work. I had been burned a couple of times in the past. Though Eileen seemed trustworthy, my watchword was trust, but verify.
I spun in my chair and propped my feet up on the windowsill. My office was on the third floor of a six story building in downtown Astor City. Astor City University was but a thirty minute car ride away. The view out of my window consisted of the high-rise across the street. Paper Street was below. If I squinted, I could make out the clothes that were worn by the secretaries in the lawyer’s office across the way. Several of the secretaries were very pretty. If I had super-vision—or better yet, x-ray vision—it was a lead-pipe cinch I would never get any work done.
My office was small, and only contained the wooden desk behind which I sat, the chair in which I reclined, a couple of client chairs that sat optimistically in front of the desk, a file cabinet, and an old couch that was against the far wall. It was not much, but it was all mine. What more could an intrepid superhero and detective possibly need? The answer was a water source. As a result, a large glass bowl full of water sat on the corner of my desk. I filled the bowl up with fresh water every time I went to my office. I got into the habit of doing so a few years ago after I burst a water pipe in the ceiling to get water to fight a supervillain who had come into my office. I had wound up flooding all the floors beneath me. My landlord and the renters below me had been less than pleased.
The outfits of the secretaries across the way flitted before my eyes in miniature as I thought about the best way to get George Chase off of Eileen’s back. I thought for a few moments about how her being on her back was what had gotten her into this fix to begin with. I then started to think about what Eileen might look like when she was naked on her back. I then thought about how unfair it was I had a naked picture of George, but not one of Eileen. Then I started thinking about how it was also unfair that George was hung like a proverbial horse while I, a licensed Hero, was limping along with equipment that paled in comparison. Then again, some fire hoses paled in comparison to George. You have to play the cards you are dealt.
Unfortunately, none of those thoughts were helping me fix Eileen’s problem. I shoved them to the side.
The first step was to find George the Genitally Gifted. Once I located him, I would figure out how to get him to leave Eileen alone.
Acting on the principle that sometimes the simplest methods are the best methods, I reached for the telephone book to see if I could locate George therein. Eventually, printed phone books would go the way of the passenger pigeon and the telegraph. The writing was on the wall. Actually, the writing was on the Internet, which was why not too many people kept phone books around anymore. But, in a lot of ways I was an old fuddy-duddy. I thought Frank Sinatra was the pinnacle of American music, that women’s legs looked better in nylons, and that I would rather read something on the printed page than on a screen.
I used my finely honed detecting and alphabetical skills to locate George Chase in the Astor City phone book. Astor City had over three million people in it, but fortunately there were only three George Chases listed. Two had addresses in suburbs right outside the city; the third was for an apartment building not too far from my office. None of those numbers matched the number for George that Eileen had given me. I did not really expect them to, but hope springs eternal.
Not being one to leave a single stone unturned, I went ahead and started calling all of the phone numbers anyway. I was careful to block the number on my cell phone before using it to make the calls.
The first George Chase was deceased according to the woman who picked up the phone and identified herself as the late George’s widow. The second George Chase I called was well on his way to being deceased if the quavering voice of the elderly man I spoke to was any indication. The third George Chase was not even a man.
“My name is actually Georgia,” the woman I spoke to at the third number said. “The stupid phone company got the listing wrong.”
“It’s shocking to find incompetence in the phone company of all places,” I said.
The woman agreed. We briefly commiserated with each other about what the world was coming to, and we then both hung up.
Unless they were lying—and what reason would they have for doing so?—none of the George Chases in the phone book were the George Chase I was looking for.
Not to be deterred, I pulled out the number for George that Eileen had given me. Still keeping my cell phone number blocked, I dialed the number. There was no answer—big shock—and the call went to voicemail. A computerized voice told me to leave a message. I hung up without doing so. No machine was the boss of me.
If George had picked up, I would have come up with some sort of story on the spot to ferret his address out of him. I had some flowers for him and I needed the exact address, perhaps. I was with the American Urological Association and I wanted to come over and study his giant hog in the interest of science, maybe. But since he had not picked up, no dice. I had a sneaking suspicion someone like George never picked up his tel
ephone unless he recognized the number.
I turned to my desktop computer. I opened up a window to a reverse telephone lookup service I used. I typed in George’s number. The number was not registered to anyone. No address was listed either. The telephone carrier for the number was, however. It was the Continental Telephone Company.
I picked up the telephone on my desk and dialed a number I knew by heart. Landlines would no doubt soon go the way of the dinosaurs as well, but it made me uncomfortable to have to rely exclusively on a cell phone. At the rate things were going, all telephones of all kinds would be obsolete soon and we would just communicate telepathically. That would be a sad day for lechers and pickpockets.
“CTC, this is Rhonda,” the voice on the other end of the line said.
“Help! I’m calling to report an obscene phone call,” I said. “Wait, I misspoke. I meant I’m calling to commit an obscene phone call.”
“Promises, promises,” Rhonda said. “What do you want from me today, Truman?”
“What do I want from you? You wound me. Maybe I was just calling to hear your dulcet tones. Maybe I was calling to profess my undying love,” I said.
“And maybe if pigs had wings, they’d be pigeons,” Rhonda said with a snort. “In the years I’ve known you, you’ve only called me when you wanted something.”
I satisfactorily handled a matter for Rhonda Pruitt years ago. Since she was a mid-level executive with CTC, she had been my go-to person there since then. She was almost old enough to be my mother, but I liked her. She was fun.
“Well, since I hate inconsistency, here’s what I need today,” I said. “I need any details you can give me about this CTC number.” I read off George’s telephone number to her. I could hear her typing on her computer keyboard in the background as I read the digits off.
“CTC’s records are strictly confidential,” she said.
“What if I told you I was hot on the trail of a supervillain?” I asked.
Superhero Detective Series (Book 1): Superhero Detective For Hire Page 2
