“What’s your name?” Deshaun asked the kid.
“Lamar.”
“You new around here, Lamar?”
“Yeah. Mom just moved us here a couple of weeks ago.”
“I thought so. If you were from around here, you’d know the deal.” Deshaun hesitated. “You got a cell phone, my man?”
The fact Lamar thought about lying was written all over his young face. “Yeah,” he finally said, no doubt avoiding the temptation to lie by remembering how it had felt when Deshaun had cuffed him.
Deshaun stuck his hand out. “Hand it over.”
“Why?” Lamar asked, his voice cracking.
“Because actions have consequences. Unless you got the money to fix that man’s window.”
“I ain’t got no money.”
“Big shock. Then hand the phone over.”
Reluctantly, Lamar pulled a smartphone out of his back pocket. He gave it to Deshaun. Deshaun dropped it to the concrete sidewalk. He ground it underfoot. Lamar looked down at the debris like he was going to cry.
Deshaun said, “Mr. Saul lost a window, now you lost a phone. Karma’s a bitch. Remember that the next time you come around here. Tennessee Heights is off limits for any of your foolishness. If you wanna bust up people’s windows and steal they shit, do it somewheres else. This is a nice quiet neighborhood, and I’m gonna keep it that way. Now get outta here. Remember what I told you.”
Like a student released from the principal’s office, Lamar scurried away. He retrieved his bike which lay in the middle of the street. He pedaled away, glancing back at Deshaun sullenly.
Deshaun looked up at where I still stood on the porch.
“Kids these days. If you don’t watch em, the whole neighborhood’ll go to hell,” he said.
“You’re doing the Lord’s work,” I had responded. Deshaun’s dark eyes had narrowed dangerously a touch, perhaps suspecting I was making fun of him. Then, with an almost imperceptible shrug of dismissal, he ambled back over to his usual spot. He resumed leaning against the short wall, waiting for a customer to come by to get a fix.
Later Saul told me four hundred dollar bills were in his mailbox the next day with only the words “For your car window” scrawled on the front of the plain white envelope the money was in. Though there was no proof the money was from Deshaun, it certainly wasn’t from the Tooth Fairy. I guess Deshaun and his boss Mitch figured four hundred dollars were a small price to pay for the people in the neighborhood to continue to overlook the drug deals that happened every day right outside our doors.
That incident with Lamar and Deshaun had been my first indication that maybe uprooting Mitch and the people under him like Deshaun would have unintended consequences as Isaac had suggested. My subsequent conversations with the Wests across the street and other people who had been in the neighborhood for years made me conclude that doing something about Mitch would be a mistake and might result in him being replaced by someone much worse. Apparently, before Mitch had come along and imposed a rough form of peace and justice on the neighborhood to minimize the number of times the police came around, Tennessee Heights had been as dangerous as a warzone. Despite the fact Mitch was a dope dealer, the longtime residents of Tennessee Heights respected him and what he had done for the neighborhood.
So, I had given up on the idea of taking care of Mitch and his crew as Kinetic. It really burned my butt to see people openly flouting the law, though. Back on the farm, life had seemed simpler, more black and white.
Then again, I had just gotten finished lying in wait for Antonio and beating him up. Maybe those of us who illegally broke into glass houses should not throw stones.
With Deshaun simultaneously waiting for customers and standing guard over the neighborhood on the other side of the closed front door, I climbed the stairs to the second floor of our house. Out of habit I avoided stepping on the next to the last stair from the top. That stair creaked loudly when you put your weight on it. Though the house had undergone some minor cosmetic renovations since its construction over a hundred years ago, the creaks and groans the house made when you stepped on certain spots indicated the house’s age. The noises the house made suited me just fine. Even if an intruder got past our high-tech alarm system, the creakiness would alert us to a stranger’s presence.
The second floor consisted of bedrooms for me and Isaac, and a bathroom we shared. Bertrand’s bedroom was in the basement, along with a small bedroom he exclusively used. He worked as a freelance translator. He often saw Isaac and me leave the house together late at night, dressed in regular clothes, with our Hero costumes stuffed into a duffel bag. We were usually going out to patrol the city, but Bertrand did not know that. He had no idea we were Heroes. He just thought we were security conscious night owls.
I went into my bedroom. Nothing was on its off-white walls except scuff marks and holes left by a procession of tenants over the years. The room was bigger than the bedroom in the mobile home I had lived in with Dad on the farm, but not by much. It was more than enough for my needs, though. I lived a pretty spartan existence, a habit I had picked up from my time in the Academy. It’s not like I owned a lot of stuff anyway. My room contained a cheap bed, a chest of drawers with framed pictures of my parents and Neha on top, and a bookcase stuffed full of books. As I hadn’t seen or spoken to Neha since she rejected me when I told her I was in love with her, I knew I should take her picture down. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
The books were my prized possessions. I had bought most of them since moving to Astor City. As busy as I was, I still loved to read. After all, before I met Isaac and Neha, books had been my best friends. After Mom died when I was twelve, Dad and I were too poor to afford to buy books. I spent a lot of time in public libraries as a kid as a result. Now that I was an adult and had a job, it gave me great pleasure to own books. Though my tastes ran to mostly science fiction and fantasy growing up, my time at the Academy and as an Apprentice had ignited an interest in history. As a result, most of the books in my bedroom’s bookcase were biographies and histories.
I opened my small closet and stowed my messenger bag on the top shelf. The inside of the closet appeared smaller than it had when I first moved into the house because I had used the carpentry skills Dad had taught me to build a hiding place on the left side of the closet. I had built a similar hiding place in Isaac’s closet in his bedroom. Just as Isaac’s did, my hiding place contained my Heroic paraphernalia: The greenish-black mask whose technology obscured my features when I put it on. My armored Kinetic costume, which was dark green on top and black on the bottom. A police scanner. The thick gold ring with the imprint of a masked man on the face of it that I received along with my Hero’s license. My Hero’s license, which looked pretty much like a college diploma, except I didn’t know any college diplomas that had been signed by the current chairman of the Heroes’ Guild’s executive committee, Pitbull, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Metahuman Affairs, and the President of the United States.
My two capes were also in this hiding place—a red one from when I graduated the Academy, and a snow white one I got at my Hero swearing-in ceremony. I usually only wore a cape on ceremonial occasions because a cape was a mighty handy thing for an opponent to grab and choke you with.
The only Hero-related stuff the hidden area didn’t contain was the wrist communicator I already had on and always wore. The door to my Heroic hideaway looked like nothing more than the narrow side wall of my closet. Apply a little pressure here and a little more there, though, and the wall slid open to reveal my hidden things. The hidden area was tiny, barely big enough for me to squeeze inside of. The Batcave it wasn’t. Being a somewhat freshly minted Hero, perhaps it was too soon for me to have a full-scale lair. I looked forward to the day when I had a lair containing an Alfred who would cater to my every whim.
Looking at the door to my hideaway caused a fresh stab of guilt to my conscience. The image of Antonio’s bloody face staring up at me was still fresh
in my mind. What kind of Hero was I to beat Antonio as I had? Yes, I had been trying to protect Hannah. But did the end justify the means? Lawyers said that when a fellow lawyer was appointed to the judiciary, he often came down with an acute case of robe-itis—that is, putting on the judge’s robe and all the power it represented went to the lawyer’s head, making him behave in ways he never would before he became a judge. Had I contracted the Hero equivalent? Did I have cape-itis? Had I let the authority to use my powers my license granted go to my head? Did being a Hero make me think the rules—both the explicit legal ones and the implicit moral ones—didn’t apply to me?
I stared at the hidden door my costume hung behind. My stomach twisted. I had planned on going out on patrol after I ate and once darkness fell. The thought of donning my costume and mask and the high ideals they were supposed to represent so recently after having violated those ideals at Antonio’s made me sick. Maybe all work and no play made Theo a dull bully.
I needed a break. The city would have to hobble along without Kinetic tonight.
I pulled off my dress shoes, khakis, and button-down shirt. I tossed the clothes into my laundry basket. Already feeling the stresses of the workday draining out of me, I put on shorts and a tee shirt instead. I padded back downstairs and into the kitchen.
I examined the contents of the refrigerator with a critical eye, trying to decide what I was in the mood for. I tended to eat both clean and prodigiously. In addition to our almost nightly patrols, Isaac and I both worked out several times a week, and my body constantly needed refueling. The Academy and the Old Man had pounded into my head the importance of being as fit and strong as possible since you never knew when you would have to rely on the strength of your body instead of the strength of your superpowers. Thanks to years of training, though I was not the scrawny kid I used to be, neither was I as big and muscular as I intended to eventually be. As Athena had always admonished us when we didn’t seem to be giving our all during Academy training, “Somewhere out there is someone who’s training his tail off while you infants are slacking, whining about how tired you are and how much your body aches. And, when you meet that non-slacker, he will beat you. Battles are won or lost long before they are actually joined by your level of preparation.”
Plus, though I was not overly vain, being buff looks much better in tight costumes than being pudgy does. Though almost all Heroes were fit—every two years the Guild required us to pass a rigorous fitness exam to maintain our licenses in active status—I had seen a few costumed supervillains with flabby arms and potbellies. It was not a good look.
Computer programmers had an expression: Garbage in, garbage out. The same was true of the human body—if you consistently fed it crap, you would have a crap body. The reverse was also true. That was why our fridge was packed with high-quality foods. In addition to us shopping at organic grocery stores, Isaac and I had pooled our meager salaries to join a community supported agriculture group. Through the CSA, Isaac and I got food from local farmers. There was no farmland in Astor City of course, but the surrounding counties had plenty. Every week the CSA made a delivery to our house of whatever produce, meat, and dairy that was in season. If no one was home, the delivery guy left the food in a cooler we kept on the porch. If it weren’t for the watchful eyes of Deshaun and Fidel, I had no doubt the food would disappear shortly after it was delivered. Though I hated to admit it, living on a street with watchful drug dealers had its perks.
With Athena’s advice about discipline and preparation ringing in my ears and the form-hugging fabric of my costume on my mind, I considered making a stir-fry with the steak and fresh vegetables delivered by the CSA the day before. The meat was from a grass-fed, antibiotic-free, hormone-free, free-range cow. The cow had lived so well, it was a wonder it had died. The stir-fry would be high protein, high fat, high calorie, and low carbs—the perfect building blocks for growing muscles. I could end the meal with my usual kale shake, composed of a ton of kale, an unpeeled cucumber, an avocado, fresh ginger and garlic, and several strawberries blended together until it was a radioactive green smoothie. I often added some hemp protein powder to the mix, mostly for the protein, but partly in the hopes there was some residual psychoactive marijuana in the hemp to help me forget I was drinking something that tasted like the bottom of a garbage pail. Isaac called the shakes my Hulk Loads. I had never turned into the Incredible Hulk drinking them. They did turn my poops green though. Baby steps.
My stomach recoiled at the thought of yet another healthy meal, and my mind recoiled at the thought of making one. Screw my muscles, I thought. I instead pulled out some leftover pizza. It was Bertrand’s, but he had told me earlier I could have some.
I popped several slices into the microwave. The smell of melted cheese, sausage, and pepperoni soon filled the room. If there was a Heaven, it probably smelled like a pizzeria. If I was going to take a break from patrolling, it seemed only proper to take a break from clean eating too. I was in the mood for comfort food, not utilitarian food. I’d return to my strict diet tomorrow. As my father James used to say, “All things in moderation, including moderation.” Not all his Jamesisms were draconian.
I took the pizza into the living room. I opened the drapes. The late afternoon sun poured in through the two windows. There were thick metal bars outside the windows, as there were on all the windows of the house. The bars were relics from a time long before I moved in when the neighborhood had been more dangerous than it was now. Through the corner of one window I saw the lower part of Deshaun’s legs stretched out on the sidewalk as he waited for a customer and kept watch over the street. Last night a Hero had beaten a civilian up after breaking into his place, and today a drug dealer was protecting that Hero. The whole world was topsy-turvy.
I settled into the couch and turned on the television. I had just missed the local news. I normally watched it before I went out on patrol as it gave a nice summary of the not so nice crime going on in the city. The fact I watched local news didn’t mean I liked it. It was wall-to-wall murders, stabbings, assaults and corruption interspersed by ads for fast food joints, car dealerships, and payday lenders. They should have called the local news Death, Destruction and Desolation Delivered With Delight. Too long and too alliterative, maybe. The newscasters always seemed so thrilled to talk about someone’s grisly murder. Maybe they had lived in the big city too long and had lost sight of the fact that every murder victim was someone’s child. The fact the local news channels had reported favorably on some of my and Isaac’s nocturnal crime-fighting exploits did not make me feel better about them.
I channel surfed as I ate the pizza. Nothing captured my interest. The scripted shows I came across didn’t draw me in. When you were used to flying around the city and battling criminals, watching a bunch of actors pretend to do so held little appeal. My reality was far more dramatic than fiction.
Though I had intended to avoid news entirely, I eventually settled on watching CNN. After a while, CNN might as well have been watching me. I stared off into space. Images of what I had done to Mad Dog paraded in front of me. The blood on the carpet around his head looked like a Jackson Pollock painting.
6
“Well if it isn’t the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s middleweight contender,” Isaac said after he walked in the front door. “Did you find somebody new to beat senseless today? Or did you switch species and decide to kick puppies instead?”
I was still in front of the television with most of my pizza, now long cold, in front of me on the coffee table. Isaac came into the living room, put his laptop bag on the floor, and plopped down heavily in a chair on my left in front of the windows. He was shaved bald, fully exposing the light brown skin of his head. His lack of hair made the jagged scar on his forehead from our fight with Iceburn years ago even more prominent. The Academy forcing all us males to keep our heads shaved while we were there had turned Isaac onto the benefits of not wrestling with a full head of hair every day. Straight black glossy hair was
on his hands and knuckles. Naked, he was hairy everywhere except on his back, like a wolfman with male pattern baldness on his backside.
Isaac wore a crisp white shirt and grey dress slacks. He had just left work. He worked for Pixelate, a company not too far from Star Tower. Pixelate did movie animation. Isaac was an illustrator there. As drawing, painting, and sculpting mythological creatures helped him transform into them—as Isaac often said, “If I can’t visualize it, I can’t become it”—Isaac had become quite the artist in the years I had known him. His Heroic training had given him marketable artistic skills, helping him to land his job at Pixelate. My own Heroic training hadn’t provided me much in the way of job skills, unless juggling telekinetically counted. The main reason I had my Times job was because the Old Man was friends with the Times’ publisher and had pulled some strings for me. When he didn’t have his costume on, the Old Man was Raymond Ajax, the uber-wealthy philanthropist and retired industrialist who knew movers and shakers around the world.
I said in response to Isaac, “I see you’re launching right into criticizing me again. Whatever happened to ‘Hey man, how was your day?’ Or, ‘Anything interesting on the news?’ Instead you’re busting my chops. You’re worse than a nagging wife. If this is what being married is like, I’m glad I haven’t taken the plunge yet.” I left unspoken the fact that women were hardly breaking the door down, trying to get to me to marry them. “That reminds me: I’m pretty sure Bertrand thinks we’re gay. All the time we spend together, the fact neither of us has ever brought a girl home, the late nights out together, only to return in the wee hours with cuts and bruises. I think he thinks we spend our nights partying at a gay bondage club or something.”
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