Some of the monikers fitted the costumes, while others looked like they were sorely mismatched and the designers colour-blind. Most made Jack want to chuckle.
Tucked in amidst the visual mayhem was a portrait of his newfound hostess, a classier rendering in black ink, pencil and minimal watercolour that accentuated her traits, including the nonplussed demeanour.
“Our rogue’s gallery,” said Pretty Amazonia as she sauntered ahead.
“That was you,” Jack mused, in hot pursuit. “Huh.”
Having passed a metal door with ‘G.M.R.’ initialled across it and the Equalizers’ logo beneath that, Jack thought twice, doubled back, and was about to take a peek.
“Don’t go in there,” the woman warned.
“Why, is it dangerous?”
“No, just a white elephant — the Giant Map Room. Has a layer of dust as thick as my heels. C’mon — this way.”
They came to a set of double doors that the woman pushed open, revealing a huge inner sanctum, mostly white.
A Spartan, unadorned milky ceiling was far above them, along with a second-floor balcony that steered close by the walls and gave a view from up there to the room proper, where they stood.
Hanging from a picture rail that did a circuit of this space were a series of replica white, lifesize plaster of Paris faces, cowls, visors and helmets, likely lifted from those jokers in the passageway. They looked like death masks. The way in which the decorations stared down at them made Jack lose count after a quick tot-up to twenty.
There was also a capacious, round white table with a carbon copy of the Equalizers’ symbol in the centre. From this angle he made out the ‘Z’.
Two-dozen chairs wrapped around the table, and next to that sat a couple of comfy ivory-coloured couches beside a glass-topped coffee table. On the table was a collection of cardboard cup-placemats with the same lightning bolt logo.
“Home, sweet home.” She scrutinized Jack again. “You certainly travel light. No luggage. Just that mask in your hands you flaunt so nervously. Relax — I won’t bite. Not yet.”
“Who are you people?” he decided to ask.
“Haven’t you heard? Thought Stan would’ve filled you in. We’re the Equalizers — sworn protectors of Heropa City, guardians of the peace, et cetera, et cetera, blah, blah.”
She laughed — making him decide straight away he liked her. Sure she was formidable, but she also had a solid sense of humour.
“This place is impressive,” Jack said, as he wistfully struggled for more meaningful dialogue.
“What, Heropa? You’ll get over it.” The woman looked him over once again. “You know, you remind me of someone.”
“I do?” Jack’s tone was edgy. “Who?”
“The actor George Peppard, when he was younger — circa Breakfast at Tiffany’s. If he’d excessively worked out, I mean.”
“Okay.”
“You have no idea who I’m talking about, do you?”
“No.”
“Sad. So, take a seat. The others will be here shortly.”
“What others?”
“The other Equalizers.”
“Okay.”
Jack eyed one of the couches and went on over.
There was an attractive hardback tome nearby, something about 1930s automobiles, which he reached over to grab. As he did so, a huge shadow appeared across the table’s surface and someone tossed a newspaper onto it.
The broadsheet grabbed more of his attention than the shadow or the book.
A headline was splashed across the top, each word several centimetres in height and in thick caps.
PEOPLE’S SAVIOUR
SLAIN!
Beneath the by-line — trumpeting that the article was written by some journo called Chief Reporter Gypsie-Ann Stellar — sat a sub-header in unnecessary inverted commas:
“Shots Fired From Grassy Knoll.”
The paper was called the Port Phillip Patriot, with the price five cents and credits including Donald Wright (publisher), Jean-Claude Forest (editor) and Arthur Simek (designer). Its huge front-page sketch came close to inciting Jack, again, to burst out laughing.
In black and white, this one showed an advertising billboard of two happy, smiling kids with a superhero crouched between them. A mask covered the top half of the hero’s face, shades of Captain America. He had a toothy, honest grin as he gave the thumbs-up beneath a slogan that read Royal Vendetta, for Strong White Teeth! and positioned just above his giant brow was the letter ‘O’.
Impacted dead centre in this fifteenth letter of the alphabet was a ragged hole with two tiny legs dangling out, apparently lifeless.
“Bull’s-eye,” Jack muttered.
“An’ the same guy.”