“Mm-hm,” the woman beside Jack responded, in a noncommittal tone.
“By the way, baby, how’s the leg?”
Wright looked directly at the Equalizer’s injured thigh. The publisher couldn’t have spotted the injury, given the change of clothes and Jack’s fairly commendable effort not to limp or favour the other leg.
“Fine,” he said.
“Swell. Allow me to show you something of my own. You’ll dig this.”
The publisher reached over and pushed a button that Jack fretted might open up the floor beneath he and Gypsie-Ann, but instead one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases slid aside.
Behind an exposed steel door tagged Lock 41, inside a sterile-looking cubbyhole with a flickering fluorescent light, was a plexiglass tube in which sat a costume atop a chisel-jawed mannequin. There was a red skullcap and half-mask with a big white star, a blue uniform boasting more stars shaped like a v-for-victory across the torso, yellow gloves, red boots, and a red belt on a pair of underpants that rode too high. The kind of get-up the Professor would’ve complained about.
Jack recognized the costume from a picture Pretty Amazonia had once shown him — these were Major Patriot’s threads. While he also felt he’d seen them somewhere else, so far as Wright was concerned? This guy looked way too old.
The publisher apparently picked up on the confusion.
“You know the adage, the one about absolute power corrupting absolutely? Well, that’s a rort. I wasn’t corrupted, I was bored senseless! Do either of you have any idea how ageing boredom can be?”
“I don’t get it,” Jack heard Gypsie-Ann cut in.
“Too much for your fabulous powers of deduction?” Wright chuckled. “Why, oh why, doesn’t that surprise me?”
“You could be generous enough to grant better clues.”
“Tart as ever, too. When will you learn to know your place?”
“Oh, dearie, p’raps I left the knowledge in my other suit?”
Jack glanced at her. “Time for quips later. He’s one of the original Capes — a member of the Crime Crusaders.”
“Crime Crusaders Crew,” Wright corrected. “Why you people always feel the need to shorten things drives me to distraction. Doing so robs them of full flavour.”
“The CCC was well before my time.” The reporter shrugged, but she had a smirk. “I heard they washed up. Not worth doing the homework.”
“Oh, huzzah. A dash of heroic repartee to raise my spirits.”
“So you’re a Cape,” Gypsie-Ann posited. “Big deal.”
“Not quite.” Wright kicked back to place his feet on the desk. “I’m not the same as you people. I didn’t go through all the smoke, mirrors and pulleys they use to keep the safe house safe — you know the place, back in Melbourne. I’ve heard it’s quite a shithole. Five years ago, when Heropa was placed online, I came in through a backdoor, since I was the original designer of this platform.”
Now walking gingerly, hardly disguising the limp, Jack went to a mantelpiece and examined the bust of a black bird he’d seen before. “Mister Wright, you wouldn’t know a Professor Erskine?”
“The creator of Captain America?” This crack came back sticky with sarcasm.
“No. The one here in Heropa.”
“Interesting. Actually, I do.”
Jack glanced over at the man. “Go on.”
“Rather a bright spark, for a phony.
“A phony?”
“That’s what we called common folk before ‘Blando’ became de rigueur — hence the letter ‘p’ you’ll find on the back of their necks.” Wright mirrored Jack’s visit to the mantelpiece, to straighten up the avian statuette. “I had Erskine do me some technical work a few years back — the humdrum things I was too busy to worry about.” Wright frowned. “He started getting idiotic notions, ideas beyond his call. I’m a very sensitive fella and had to let him go.”
“As one does,” Gypsie-Ann said.
She was looking at the costume in the secret compartment, the smirk still on her face, but her comment appeared to incite her boss.
“Will you stop with that incessant prattling?” he demanded.
“So, why’d you quit being a Cape?” Jack said, playing for time. “Why the whole Donald Wright sham?”
“Playing for time is not going to help you.” Wright’s eyes held onto Jack’s. “Don’t you realize you stand no chance?”
“So indulge the poor kid,” Gypsy-Ann sighed.
“Yes, why not?” Skipping back to his desk, Wright pushed aside some paperwork and sat down on top. “In the early days, one had free range. This was a brave new world, baby. When I established this secret identity, it didn’t make sense to be a menial reporter like Clark Kent or Gypsie-Ann here — no offence, darling.”