The Brick’s next sentence switched off the clamour.
“Then you’re old enough.”
Cutting back to the here and now, Jack glanced over at his partner, was silently grateful.
“Kid’s an adult, in my book,” the man went on. “Been in action already, kicked arse, got kicked himself in the bum. Been on the receiving end o’ some serious shit. Fuck it.” He chuckled —“Lordy, I do like the new world!” — and then thumbed the patio outside. “You comin’, bright eyes? We have a party t’get started.”
Beaming, Jack nodded. “For sure, Mister B. Ta.”
“Then go grab the ice.”
Somewhat deflated, their lionhearted leader trudged in the opposite direction, toward the stairs. “Inconceivable,” he hissed to no one in particular.
They could even see his legs move.
#127
Jack was less recuperating, more reeling, from his first ever drunken binge when they got the scoop.
“SC — wake up. Come on. Wakey-wakey.”
Pretty Amazonia shook him roughly, and went so far as to throw in a couple of jarring slaps. He came to half-on, half-off a lounge chair, outside on the balcony.
The sun was low in a sky tainted pink. The Brick lay spread-eagled on the tiling at Jack’s feet, an empty martini glass stuck in his fist. He was snoring like an outdoor generator.
“I don’t feel well,” Jack grumbled, about to close his eyes again.
“Not my problem. Pull yourself together — we have business.” After slapping him awake one more time, the woman studied an array of scattered bottles. “That’s alcohol?”
“We can drink!” roared the Brick, suddenly awake, as he reared up into a sitting position and attempted to drain emptiness from his glass. “Way o’ the new world — halle-friggin’-lujah!”
The notion of any similar celebration far from his mind, Jack felt ill. “I’m never drinking again,” the disoriented Equalizer said to nobody.
It seemed impossible to recollect everything he and the Brick had yacked about while toasting one another into oblivion. The Brick reciting cocktail recipes was one tangent — a Luis Buñuel surrealist martini being the standout — and, later on, the big man offered fatherly advice over his shaker, something about women being an enigma. Had Jack mentioned Louise? He couldn’t remember — and prayed he kept his trap shut.
Pretty Amazonia squatted down beside her rock-ribbed colleague and carefully prised away his glass.
“Hon, much as I don’t want to rain on your party — I’m going to rain on your party. We got a call from the mayor. They found the Great White Hope.”
“Yeah? Where was the Great Gazoo off sulking this time?”
PA deliberated a moment.
“Remember the statue they dedicated to the Big O yesterday? Ten-metre granite thing with his arms outstretched, over on the Boardwalk?”
“Don’t ‘member nothin’ right now, babe.”
“God, I’m there with you,” Jack muttered. “Never drinking again.”
“Well, both of you must remember how put-out the GWH was — come on, use those pickled brains. Him going on about being the new leader of the Equalizers, yet having no monument to call his own.”
“Oh, yeah. That I do recall.” The Brick smiled as he reached for the cocktail shaker, which was lying abandoned under Jack’s chair.
The woman stopped him. “Not now,” she said. “Later.”
“Why?” The Brick sounded like an annoyed drunk.
“Good reason. The GWH is dead.”
Both men looked at her, stunned, but the Brick still got in his usual word first.
“What?”
“He’s dead.”
“Yeah — you said.”
“So I did.”
“How?”
Clearing her throat, PA pressed lips together and focused above her large partner’s skull. Then she spoke. “Someone strung him up from the arms of that statue — the Big O’s — and crucified him there, his eyes gouged out.”
“Jesus,” Jack exhaled, hangover misplaced.
“I’m thinking that’s precisely what the perps wanted to replicate, except for the bonus extra with the eyes.”
“See no evil?” he suggested.
“And there was a message.”
The Brick rubbed his skull, likely trying to rejig his brain. “What message?”
“Messily painted on the plinth beneath the GWH, spiralling round the column.”
“Well, don’t keep us in suspense — what’d it say, dollface?”
“I have no idea.”
“You fergot yer glasses?”
“No, I have no idea what it said. I can’t begin to pronounce the paintjob, but I can spell it for you: H-O-U-Y-H-N-H-N-M-S.”