“None taken.”
“Anyhow, I elevated myself to publisher. We ran the place then, everything, riding roughshod over the hoi polloi. And then Sir-bloody-Omphalos came along with these ridiculous notions of changing Heropa, of making it a ‘better place’, as he ranted to anyone that’d listen. Better for whom, I ask you? He broke up our Crime Crusaders Crew, cavorted with phonies, and set up the Equalizers. Installed that arrogant oaf the Great White Hope as second-in-charge, while I didn’t receive any invitation at all.”
“Hence the sour grapes.”
“Far from it. As I say, I was bored. The change suited me. I settled into my new alter ego, starting to manipulate things from here.”
“And now you’re killing Capes.”
“As the dear old GWH would have said, boring me to tears: ‘Par for the course, good fellow, par for the course’, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Then you admit it?” Gypsie-Ann cut in, her fingers playing with the steel catch on her bag.
“But — hang on,” Jack said as he held up a warning hand to his colleague. “Surely you still have to play ball by the same rules as us. If the safeties are off, what’s to stop me blowing you through yonder window?”
“A twenty-one storey drop.”
“Unless you hit something on the way down.”
“Decidedly messy,” Wright mused.
“Right you are.”
The publisher stood up, opened one of the multitudes of drawers lining his massive bureau, and took out a squareish Colt M1911 automatic — the standard-issue sidearm for American military types from 1911 to 1985. He racked the slide, switched off the safety.
“Alternatively, I could do the chore myself.” Having lined up the rectangular silver barrel by his right temple, Wright prepared to pull the trigger. “BANG!” he shouted.
Jack and Gypsie-Ann jumped; the man roared with laughter.
“What?” he finally managed, drying tears with a floral hanky. “Did you seriously think I’m some kind of suicidal nutcase?”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” Jack muttered.
“To shame!” Wright then spun the revolver with an adept nod to Western gunslingers, and this time the barrel stopped between his jaw line and throat, pointed upwards — which was when he really pulled the trigger.
“Crap!” Gypsie-Ann yelped.
Jack didn’t get to squeeze out any sound. Probably he was stunned, since his face had been redecorated with the older man’s blood and brains.
“Also messy, as you can see.”
Another Donald Wright slunk into the room, wearing the exact same faux military outfit, his grey matter intact, and sat on the edge of the desk to survey the suicide diorama.
“Gore everywhere. Not pretty at all. Oh, I’m sorry, baby — did I mess up your suit?”
This second Wright was watching Jack’s distress with an amused expression, so Gypsie-Ann pulled herself together. “Not mine,” she said. The reporter pursed lips, studying both Wrights in return, dead and alive. “Twins,” she deduced.
Wright tut-tutted, wagging a finger her way.
“Oh, far more than double-trouble. Duplication is my signature gift. One of me dies, another takes right up and continues the charade. Rather like the HYDRA terrorist organization in Marvel Comics: ‘If a head is cut off, two more will take its place’ — one way in which I’ve been able to wear so many professional hats. I’ll admit it’s spread my intellect rather thin, however — you see, the power is supposed be a temporary trick, not permanent. There are numerous copies, and I have my rather schizophrenic moments — but that adds to the challenge, and levels the playing field a fraction for you cretinous people.”
“Humility is obviously something you don’t have to worry about,” Jack said, back on top of his wits and clearing his eyes with a sleeve.
“You should try sitting in on the humbug’s three-hour divisional meetings — end of every bloody month,” Gypsie-Ann responded.
“Complaints, complaints. This is all I hear.”
“When you complicate things, of course you’re going to have complaints running interference.”
“It’s actually all very simple.” The elderly man took out a cigar, unwrapped the thing, and coerced it into his cigarette holder. “If you really knew your comicbook history — I mean really, not just the 1960s Marvel fodder you seem so enamoured with, Southern Cross — you’d have figured this out already. You’d know about a hero named Captain Freedom.”
That name snagged Jack’s attention, just as he finished wiping down his face. He glanced over to the wall covered with 1930s and ’40s junk. At one of the old, framed collectibles —Speed Comics issue 17, the one with the unnamed Captain America rip-off individual on the cover.