Moving on to the present and reality, I found out basic biographical info on Dr. Sven Morigi online, including his impressive credentials. Then I logged into the Mansion’s network, which was not much good for celebrity gossip, but excellent for fact-checking. I found the same info, but no photos, which wasn’t that odd. Scientists were often self-conscious about being in the public eye.
Not that I have any intention of dating him, even though he’s single and successful. Sven Morigi. His name sounds like someone who holds his glasses together with a paper clip. Which I no longer do since Dahlia gave me an eyeglass repair kit with little screws. I would be more than willing to offer a screw to Dr. Morigi if he needed one.
Dahlia called and I told her about my first day at QUIRC, and she asked, “Did you have to face Amber Hammerhead?”
“That’s tomorrow. I am kind of, sort of, totally dreading it.”
“She probably knows you’re the inspiration for ‘Gin Spins Me Equatorially.’ ”
“I don’t remember that one. You’re making it up.”
“It was only performed live on their final tour, Miss Gravity-rhymes-with-carnal-depravity.”
“Oh, gawd! Don’t say any more. Uh, I went to lunch with a buff hotshot attorney named Fritz today.”
“Tell me all!” she said, and I was glad I’d successfully diverted her.
THIRD PARTY COMPLAINT
FEBRUARY 9
VALENTINE’S DAY RESOLUTION
COUNTDOWN: 5 DAYS!
Spent the morning panicking and drinking too many cappuccinos, so I was jittery and needed an intestinal sponge to soak up the caffeine. I ate one of the gourmet donuts (bacon, apple, cinnamon) that was in the breakroom. It was so good, I ate another (banana and pecan with maple glaze), and then another, the most scrumptious of them all, a peanut butter and blackberry jelly donut. As I bit into it, the jelly spurted out and onto the collar of my jacket.
I hurried to clean up the mess with paper towels, but the lint glommed onto the jam, making the smear worse. I glanced at the clock on the wall, and somehow it was time for my meeting with Amber. I rushed back to my office, planning to change into one of my extra jackets, but I was too late—the blond hammerhead was right ahead of me.
Donner’s eyebrows went up behind his glasses and he said, “Ms. Walters, there’s—”
As I went by him, I whispered, “I know! I saw her. Thanks!”
I yanked off my ponytail holder and shook out my hair so that it covered the splotch, and then I stepped into my office.
Amber was sitting at the round glass table by the window. I joined her and said the usual stuff, but I kept getting seriously eeped out thinking of the things Ellis could have told her about me. I remembered all the details because it had been a singular occasion for me.
Amber and I reviewed strategies for our case, but I could sense the hostility beneath her cool manner. Meanwhile, the donuts had kicked in, and I was fighting both a sugar and caffeine high and my ookometer was swinging wildly from side to side. My voice had a quaver in it, and every time I looked at Amber I thought of Ellis doing those things to her. It made me feel nauseated. Or it could have been the lethal breakfast combo of caffeine, sugar, and grease.
“I attended the initial meetings with Dr. Sven Morigi,” she said, in a voice that was richer and sweeter than the delectable donuts. “Breach of contract is a given.”
“What about wrongful termination?” I asked.
“He wasn’t an employee of the company,” she said, looking irked.
“I realize that, but his contract is structured more like an employment agreement than a consultant’s, so let’s look into it. I’ll also go for patent infringement.”
“Obviously,” she said snippily, as if I was a clueless newbie. “Is there anything else?”
The fact that she routinely did the nasty with my fantasy man had thrown me off my game, but I said, “Yes, there is. Have you contacted anyone else involved in the case, even socially?”
“Do you mean, have I revealed anything to Ellis’s colleagues at ReplaceMax? No.”
“That’s not what I was implying,” I said. “I wondered if there was anything that hasn’t been included in the preliminary report because it was assumed to be a known factor.”
She put her left hand to her throat to show off her engagement ring. “Jennifer, it would be a waste of my time guessing what you might not know, but if you have any further questions, send an email. Your primary responsibility may be this case, but I have other clients.”
I felt my shoulders creeping up with tension. “I’ll do that and I would appreciate immediate responses. Mr. Quintal impressed upon me that we’ve got to get the case to trial before one of our witnesses dies.”
Amber Hammerhead stood up and smoothed her skirt, which was already smooth. “I don’t see what the rush is. There’s nothing like a dead child to wring sympathy from the jury.”
I stared at her appalled. Of all the women in the world, why was Ellis marrying this vile and heinous she-demon? What did that say about him as a human being?
“Now, if we’re done…”
I knew I had to deal with the issue, so I said, “There is one final thing. I wanted you to know that my initial encounter with Ellis was an isolated, anomalous incident. He didn’t even know my name properly, nor was there any subsequent contact.”
“Yes, I’m aware of his history. I’m sure he didn’t distinguish between all the Jennys, Ginnys, and Jillys, and he was long finished with drunken, love-struck groupies when he began pursuing me.” Her nostrils widened as if she smelled something unpleasant. “Please try to be more presentable for client meetings.”
I couldn’t say anything because I was busy processing the flurry of insults. I really wanted to break something—preferably over her head or with her head—but I did my breathing exercises while she swept out of the room, and then I went out to see Donner.
“Sorry I was abrupt, Donner. I didn’t want to keep Amber waiting.”
He gave me an apologetic half smile and then held out a wet wipe packet. “You’ve got something,” he said and touched his finger to his cheek.
I mimicked his gesture and felt something sticky. I know that evil hammerhead will smeer to Ellis that I had blackberry jelly on my face for the entire meeting.
5:30 P.M.
Ruth called me from the Avengers Mansion to say that Shulky’s Valentine’s Day cards and gifts have been coming in by the truckload. She tried to lure me in with oatmeal-raisin cookies and hot chocolate, so that we could go through the packages together.
I try not to feel jealous that Shulky gets so much attention. I told Ruth to have one of the interns log the cards, messages, and gifts on a spreadsheet. She knows the drill—thank-you notes to fans, dispose of all organic matter (some okay and some seriously eww!), donate usable gifts to the women’s shelter, and auction off valuables for the Avengers Charity Fund. “Ruth, if you see anything you like, please take it as a token of Shulky’s appreciation for all you do.”
“I did see a bath set—thanks, Jennifer!” Ruth said, “I think it’s amazing how everyone still loves Shulky even if she’s on a break from the main action. Don’t you want any of the presents?”
“They’re not really mine, are they? They’re intended for Shulky. Oh, that reminds me, she’s expecting an outfit from Christian Siriano, so keep that one.”
“Will you or Shulky be going out on Valentine’s Day?”
“I don’t think so. She’s supposed to stay out of trouble, and I’ve got a multibillion-dollar case to prepare.”
10:55 P.M.
I’d just finished grinding through a kazillion mind-numbing pages on the ReplaceMax’s clinical trials when my aPhone buzzed with a call from the night scheduler at the Mansion. He said, “We know you’re taking a break, but we just got a call right near you in Tribeca. Someone is using a raygun—well, a moongun or something like that—and is carving up a bank. Sergeant Palmieri’s already on the scene.”
>
Once he gave me the location, I said I’d be there stat! (I really have to stop picking up Dahlia’s vocabulary.) I stripped off my clothes. As I transformed, I felt the lingering humiliation from my day vanish, and by the time Shulky danced naked to her closet, my problems seemed inconsequential. She selected a slinky silver bodysuit with purple trim, matching boots, and armbands.
She preened in the mirror for only a moment, saying, “Who loves ya, baby?” before flipping back her hair, dashing into the elevator, and hitting the express subbasement button. It was exhilarating being in her body and getting that delicious surge of her energy that made me think, Ellis who?
She ran through the tunnels until she was only a few blocks from the crime scene, and then she slipped out to the street via a hidden door behind a brick wall. She saw the commotion ahead at National Amalgamated Savings & Loan. Gawkers were moving toward the bank, a blocky, squat building, and everyone was staring upward.
Directly across the street from National Amalgamated was a tall office building bordered on either side with narrow alleys. High atop this building was a structure with a huge reflecting lens and a mechanism that focused light from the full moon into a brilliant, intense beam that was aimed at the bank, searing through the thick granite walls.
Shulky deftly wove through the crowd—who now shouted, “She-Hulk! She-Hulk’s here!”—and ran past a patrol car sliced lengthwise, each side tilting over to reveal the car’s interior. A Joocey Jooce spilled from its cup onto the pavement.
She found Sergeant Patty standing at the end of the block with a dozen officers. The rawboned woman looked bulky in a down coat and flak jacket.
“Hi, Patty, what’s shaking?”
“Thanks for coming, Shulky. Kickass outfit, by the way, and here I am looking like a goddamn Puerto Rican Michelin Man. Knock me over and I’ll roll. Anyways, this miscreant set up a moonbeam raygun and sliced through my cruiser like a goddamn Ginsu knife. I didn’t even get to finish my goddamn lime-papaya smoothie.”
“That’s a bitch—I’ll have a friend send you some two-for-one coupons. Is the aforementioned asshole anyone we know?”
“I don’t recognize him, and I can’t figure what he wants,” Patty said. “The bank is cut up through and through, but he hasn’t made a move toward the vault. That office building has a freight elevator facing the alley. That’s probably where the raygun gear was loaded in.”
Shulky could see the lines crisscrossing the bank, like a series of Ts. “Someone capable of creating a moonbeam raygun is smart enough to think of a slicker way to rob a bank. You thinking what I’m thinking?”
Patty gazed upward to the top of the office building and said, “Same look-ma-no-hands, immature, attention-grabbing style as the water spheres hijinks. It would take a coordinated team of regular humans to assemble that goddamn moonbeam thingamajig on the roof, but there’s no sign of anyone ’cept the aforementioned asshole.”
“So either his crew is hiding out or he may have super strength. What’s your team doing?”
Patty said that she’d sent for mirrors and hoped to reflect the moonbeam back to its source.
“Too dangerous,” Shulky said. “One slip and you might flame out the entire building. Pattycake, create a distraction for me and I’ll go up and destroy the mechanism. Can you get the access codes to the office building, and do you have any rappelling gear?”
“What kind of cop do you think I am? Of course I’ve got goddamn rappelling gear.”
Two minutes later, Shulky was in the office building and keying in the code for the service elevator. The elevator hummed and began pulling her up through the dark empty floors. Even though I trusted her completely most of the time a lot, I always worried that an elevator wouldn’t be able to hold her mass and we’d go plummeting to the ground.
Shulky felt her skin tingle with excitement and made a purring sound in the back of her throat. Normal women didn’t do that. Maybe strippers did. I don’t know, but once Tony asked me to “growl” for him and I’d firmly told him that I wasn’t a dog. Tony always said that he didn’t compare me to Shulky. Of course, I used to tell him that he was the sexiest man I’d ever met.
Shulky got out at the twentieth floor because she didn’t want the elevator to announce her arrival. She tapped in the code to bypass the alarm on the emergency exit. When the light turned green, her favorite color, she murmured, “Green means go, baby, go,” and opened a door to the shadowy exterior fire escape.
As she stepped onto the escape, the old iron creaked ominously. “Fine,” she muttered. “I don’t need youse anyway.”
Seriously, youse? I think she thought she sounded amusing in an ironic way. I hoped she wouldn’t start wearing a trucker’s cap.
She swung the rappelling hook and threw it up to a ledge on the floor above. She would have liked to quickly scale up the building, but she thought a sneakier approach was needed. She kept to the shadows as she moved from ledge to ledge. The icy wind was refreshing over her skin. She relished it, thinking of the contrasting heat she’d feel when she went dancing later.
I tried to tell her, “No, we are not going dancing later! I have work tomorrow. No and no and no!” but she ignored me.
When Shulky was almost at the top of the building, she signaled down to Patty.
Patty scooted into a squad car and set off an ear-piercing siren. When she had the crowd’s attention, she got out of the car with a bullhorn to announce, “You up there! Hey, I’m talking to you, jerkface! You are hereby ordered to cease and desist. Come down and give yourself up peacefully.”
The moonbeam raygun swung around, scorching into the pavement near Patty, who jumped back.
This was the moment when Shulky threw the hook to the highest ledge and swiftly drew herself up. She stood in the shadows and spotted a man’s back near the base of the raygun structure. He was wearing a hooded cape, but she could hear his childish laughter as he aimed the raygun back toward the bank.
She was moving toward him when a high-pitched buzz-buzz-buzz sounded, and she knew that she’d tripped an alarm.
The man turned around and shouted, “She-Hulk!” His face was hidden behind a blue mask.
She raised her chin, squared her amazing shoulders, and grinned, her lips curving upward. I knew that even in darkness, her eyes glittered like emeralds. “The sergeant asked youse nice to stop your mischief, and now I’m going to tell youse to stop, but not so nice.”
Youse again!
She leapt toward him as he tried to target the moonbeam ray at her. The icy white beam swooped upward, cutting through the black sky.
Before he could gain control of the raygun, Shulky swung at him.
Any of her punches would have connected with a normal human. Heck, they would have blasted a normal human off his feet and across the street with a kapow! But the man ducked and wove away. He skipped agilely to the edge of the roof, and she could see his mischievous smile through the mask.
She stepped forward and teased him with “There’s nowhere else to go, so just come here and accept the inevitable like a good loser.”
“I’m not the loser today.” He sidled along the ledge and then suddenly pulled out a small device. “Not while I have my moonbeam blaster junior.”
“Nifty. I love travel-size versions, but you won’t succeed with whatever it is you’re trying to do.”
“I already have,” he said and giggled crazily. “I wanted you to come and here you are. I didn’t get a good look at you last time. You really are a bigger-than-life green freak show! Goodbye, She-Hulk. See your tragic demise in my dreams.”
He flipped a lever on the blaster jr., and there was a deafening whine as all the moon power from the massive parent mechanism was pulled into the handheld device in a beam of light so intense that she had to squint.
He pointed the blaster jr. at Shulky, and his arm shook as he strained to control the tremendous energy surging through the device. At the second when he steadied the blaster jr., she jumped a
way—and the beam cut through the roof that had been at her feet.
“You’re fast,” he said.
“Oh, now you’re just flirting.”
He giggled. “But are you fast enough?”
He turned and aimed the blaster jr. at the parent moonbeam’s support structure. The ray cleanly bisected the metal framework.
At this great height, the wind was so powerful that it tipped the carefully balanced top half of the structure. The huge lens and its housing teetered for only a moment as the fierce gusts whipped around it.
And then the metal groaned as the contraption fell over, toward the crowd below.
Just as quickly, Shulky leapt to the edge of the roof and grabbed one of the moonbeam’s support legs.
Gravity dragged her down and almost carried her over the ledge, but she threw her weight back. She braced her feet and lugged the hefty apparatus back onto the roof. The applause from the crowd below was loud enough to hear through the howl of the wind. She balanced her weight and hurled the contraption onto the center of the roof, making the huge lens shatter and the metal shriek.
She turned to the creep and stalked around the perimeter of the roof like a lioness circling her prey. “What are youse gonna do now without your moon power, twerp?”
He laughed his crazy laugh and said, “That was just for fun. The blaster jr. can harness enough power on its own for trivial tasks, and what’s more trivial than a superhuman who’s been kicked off the team because she’s sooo obnoxious?”
“Why you—” she began, but he’d already pulled the lever. The blaster jr. sliced a chunk off the roof, and it fell away, taking Shulky—and me—plunging down into the space between the buildings.
It was one of those Holy shit! moments that made me want to pee my pants if Shulky had bothered to wear any, but it did not faze her one bit. She was only worried about pancaking anyone who might be below.
She threw out her arms, but her fingers barely grazed the narrow ledges that marked each floor, and she shouted, “Heads up!” I wished I could close her eyes so I couldn’t see our impending death.
The She-Hulk Diaries Page 9
