Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa(110)

“Six is a possibility.”

“Or not.”

She contemplated the notion, rolling it round the hay inside her skull. This would be just like O, finding out something vital, and then neglecting to take adequate notes — unlike Kahn, who wrote down everything.

“Well,” she said, “five, six, or more — Wright will still be a problem, along with all the accoutrements he’s shipping into this city. Fat chance me doing an exposé, given he runs the paper and we have no evidence. Kahn, we need Prof Erskine here. Jack told me he’s worked with Wright. He may know something we don’t.”

“I thought you’d be pressing charges.”

“Did I say that?”

“No, but he shot you down in cold blood.”

“Stop trying to read my mind.”

“Whatever.” Kahn used his pen as a bookmark and closed the tome. “Not an easy thing to arrange in any case — Judge Fargo wants him to stand trial for the assault.”

“Leave Fargo to me.”

“And Chief O’Hara? I’d have to go above his head, but you should know that he and Wright are in each other’s pockets.”

“I’m sure you’ll sort something out. You’re usually inventive at that sort of thing — for a law-enforcement official, I mean.”

The police officer smiled. “Flattery, with a caveat, goes far.”

“I knew it would.”

Having propped herself on the edge of the large round table with the Equalizers logo in the centre, Pretty Amazonia flaunted a pair of scissors and started snipping away at her hair, leaving great wads of purple on the floor, in between crushed orange flowers. Stellar and Kahn stopped quarrelling to stare at the sight.

“PA?” Stellar said, more worried. “Are you okay?”

“Sure I am.” The woman grabbed a fistful of tresses and hacked them off just inches from her scalp. “But there’s a time for gung-ho, as much as there is for glamour. I’m going to kick Wright’s bum, and I don’t think he’ll worry while I bounce round looking pretty. What he did to Jack and his girl is…just vile. I’m going to paint his life vile. Hence the time for gung-ho.”





#169


Jack rode straight over to the Port Phillip Patriot, crashed through the glass entrance, grabbed an elevator up, and blew out the twenty-first and twenty-second floors. Didn’t realise he had that much power. Innocent people might’ve got hurt, but the place should have been empty this time of night — not that he gave a shit either way.

Next up was Hatfield House, at 380 South San Rafael Drive. This time Jack taxied it, remembering nothing from the drive, how long it took, or how much he paid.

Left the neoclassical mansion shattered and ablaze. Didn’t know if one or more of Donald Wright’s clones were caught in either maelstrom.

The Brick found him near dawn, wandering the streets downtown, raving at the heavens like a madman. The Equalizer weathered a wild plasma blast, and then pulled his partner to him, hugging for all he was worthwhile Jack plucked out hair and howled.

Eventually, the Brick drove to Heropa City General Hospital where — after much protest, followed by Brick-like intimidation — they x-rayed Jack, patched the ballistic trauma (stitching the entry and exit wounds in his thigh), shot him up with antibiotics and a merciful amount of painkillers, and placed the man in a private room far from other patients, unconscious, on an intravenous drip of isotonic fluids.

Precariously seated in the waiting room, dressed only in his undies, the Brick caught up on fretful sleep for an hour or so, and then rifled through old dailies and frayed magazines sitting in a wire rack.

One in particular caught his fancy when he recognized a pair of costumed legs on a folded newspaper. The Equalizer opened up the broadsheet, written in some foreign lingo like Hungarian, and took in another drawing of Southern Cross in action — without his mask, precisely as Jack preferred.

The Brick smiled.

Local artists seemed to like the whole headline-ripping theme — and in this case he couldn’t make any sense of the headlines. This would cause the kid to laugh, surely.

Or not.

Carefully refolding the paper, the Brick breathed out noisily. A sourpuss old lady, across the aisle, acted annoyed by the sound but what did he care? Silly battle-axe.

The Equalizer’s body ached all over. Still alive, which was surprising. PA said he had Stellar to acknowledge for the small mercy, thanks to that miracle blood of hers. Blood that’d do nothing to thaw this heart or fix up the kid’s broken one.

Call in.

He needed to call in, let Pretty Amazonia know that Jack had been found. She could tell Kahn and Stellar.