Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa(132)

“Ew.”

“Don’t worry — only reading material, I think.”

“We hope. And the bullet?”

“It’s a .45 ACP, which I suspected. Used in Colt pistols.”

At this news, the reporter stared. “Like an automatic?”

“Could be. Or a large calibre sport shooter.”

Gypsie-Ann sat back, thinking. “Wright had a Colt automatic. It’s what he used to kill one of his doubles in front of me and Jack.” Straight after, she jumped up, sending her chair flying backwards and clattering across the floor. A nearby waiter looked peeved, but she didn’t notice. “Oh, crap — suicide guy was one of the five! Which means, if there are six—”

“One of those losers is still on the loose.” PA stared at her sister. “Jack. The Brick. We have to warn them.”

Nodding, Gypsie-Ann had started to say, “There are times when you do have your moments,” but Pretty Amazonia was gone before ‘times’ had spilled past her lips. “And I do wish you’d let me finish my compliments,” the reporter added into empty air.





#184


“You still with us?”

“…Yep…”

“Grandy-doodee.”

A kick to his ribcage was nothing compared with the pain emanating from the top of Jack’s skull. At least his leg and arm were dull throbs — useless limbs, sure, flopping about like they belonged to someone else — but the migraine was immediate and overwhelming.

The Equalizer knew he had to retain the old man’s attention, keep him from looking too closely over the bench behind him and thereby espying Louise beyond the grille. Hopefully she’d ducked down low, out of sight, but he had no way of knowing if this were so.

Talk, you idiot, he told himself. Any old thing will do.

“You wouldn’t have any…pain killers on you?”

Donald Wright pretended to pat himself down. “Sadly, the medicine cabinet is dry. Tell you what, though, I have another funky idea. Why don’t you resort to an old-fashioned four-letter word of ill-repute? My sources tell me that this escape clause is back on the cards.”

“Go to hell.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt there — eventually. You, however, can stop the pain, here and now. You can live, Jack-o-mine.”

“With a catch?”

“Of course, of course, of course. There is the silly two-day handicap, giving me plenty of time to exterminate your twee chums: Stellar, Pretty Amazonia, that brute the Brick, old Erskine. I’ll throw in the police officer, Captain Kahn, for good measure — I know you’ve been buddying up. Even if you resort to another Reset, I have until midnight to mop up these folk. The day is young. You may have killed all my clones but left me, the original and the best.”

“Jeez…you have ludicrous tabs…”

“On myself? You already told me. Yawn. Well, go on.”

“Go on, what?”

“Laugh some more. A slug in the labonza will knock any remaining wind out of the sails — let’s see how well you snicker after losing that member of the family.”

His gun was already moving down in this direction. Confused and disoriented as he was, Jack grasped he had to stall the fiend. If only he could think clearly — everything was yellow-starred, wonky, a flux of extreme agony from various points in his body.

“I don’t get it,” the Equalizer managed to say, but it came out too soft. The weapon was still on the prowl. “I don’t get it,” he reiterated in a louder voice. Bingo. The pistol paused.

“Don’t get what?”

“You…”

“Me? You want an explanation? A confession? Some kind of villain’s soliloquy?”

“No. Not that.”

“Oh.” Wright sounded disappointed. “What, then?”

Jack crawled to the wall beneath the counter and pulled himself back up to a sitting position. “There were six of you.” He offered this as a statement, rather than a question. They had to be certain.

“There weren’t six.”

Bzzzt—! So much for the note, Milkcrate Man’s memory, and that collection of bowler hats.

“You think you intuit everything, daddy-o. We were seven.”

Huh?

“Did you know that seven was a lucky number in Japan? No? Don’t sweat it — people in general are ill-educated these days. Such a shame. In my past life, in Melbourne, I had an interest in things Japanese. A fascinating, hip culture, albeit a dead one. Ahhh, seven. What an intriguing number. There are the seven deadly sins, the seven dwarfs, seven samurai — and the magnificent seven. We believed we were the latter, all decked out in our identical Major Patriot duds.”