Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa(45)
“Can you tell me more about him — about the Big O?”
Gypsie-Ann smiled thinly. “He didn’t like being called the Big O.” She scratched at her left ear. “What is this, two hundred questions? You want a job at the Patriot?”
“Just trying to get up to par here. What was your take on Sir Omphalos?”
The reporter sat down in her chair on the other side of the clutter and peered back at Jack through piles of paper and old coffee cups.
“O was an idealist — you know he helped create Heropa?”
Jack raised his eyebrows. “No.”
“Well, he was one of the chief architects of all this.” The woman waved at the mess. “Not that he was satisfied.”
“He wasn’t?”
“Hardly. O told me he felt the original vision had been tainted —‘polluted’, in his words. That’s why he broke up the Crime Crusaders and rolled out the Equalizers, equal being the key word. By this, he meant equality for all people, not just the Capes.”
“For Blandos too?”
“He hated that word, ‘Blando’.” The woman’s eyes moved around the room and finally settled on the window. “Far more than he disliked being called the Big O,” she added, with another narrow smile.
“Is it possible someone didn’t appreciate his vision?”
“Vision. Nicely put. Are you asking me if that was why he was assassinated?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, you’re not the only one who thinks so.” Gypsie-Ann glanced over.
“What was he like?”
“A wonderful man.”
She sat up straight and looked Jack in the eye.
“He had wit — you know the bugger plundered the Equalizers’ lightning bolt logo? Pinched a symbol used back in the 1930s by the British union of Fascists. The only differences being it’s black-and-white and back-to-front.”
“I thought Israel-someone-or-other did the logo.”
Gypsie-Ann laughed. “Oh, the Israel Schnapps nonsense? Another of O’s jokes. Israel was the birth name of Ira R. Schnapp, who designed the Action Comics symbol and the Comics Code Authority seal you once saw on all the comics from the 1950s. Knowing O, though, I suspect he also decided on this particular banner and rumoured designer combination to remind himself of a path not to follow: Fascism and censorship.”
“That makes me more fond of the thing,” Jack decided.
“Nice to hear. Want to know more?”
“Please.”
“O loved his classic Hollywood movies as much as he did the comicbooks of the twentieth century — not merely American ones, but British and Australian. Hence the commingling here. That said, O decided Heropa was too much skewed in favour of the 1940s golden age of comics. He preferred the silver age, you know, from the ’60s. This imbalance, he said, was the handiwork of his programming partner.”
“You know who that was?”
“O never mentioned him by name. But definitely a man.”
“Do you reckon it may’ve been someone who also became a Cape?”
“Again — I haven’t the faintest.”
Gypsie-Ann sighed.
“You know what I dislike about Heropa? There are no insects. One of the minor details they forgot — or chose to ignore — when they designed the place. Back in Melbourne, my father was an entomologist, so I grew up with bugs all over the house. Until one day he vanished, the house was requisitioned by the State, and the rest of the family tossed out on our ears.”
The reporter turned passive nostalgia on its own ear and stuck an attacking scowl on her mush in the space of two seconds.
“Now…well and truly my turn to conduct a grilling. Things recently have been out-of-whack. Not just Capes being bumped off, but Blandos acting differently, remembering things from the day before. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know, or won’t tell me? I’ll find out eventually, you do realize that?”
Jack believed her. “If you do — can you tell us?”
“I’m not sure you deserve any more intel — our relationship is already heavily weighted in your favour. So, can you tell me who the Capes suspect of perpetrating these murders?”
“We don’t know.”
“What do you know?”
“Honestly? Next to nothing.”
“Well, that’s unfair. I blather on and you suck it all up, only to play dumb when the tables are turned. How about next time letting me know in advance that you’re intending to give me the short end of the stick?”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry? You’d make a good reporter. Get out of here.”