Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa(68)

After that the connection went dead. Jack sat on the edge of the bed, wearing green-and-white checked pyjamas, mulling over what he’d awoken to while he quickly rubbed sleep from his eyes.

He didn’t go collect the others. The Equalizer flew solo, taking a lonesome yellow cab downtown, paying, and climbing out of his suit in a back alley. Didn’t want to get the thing dirty, so he wrapped it in two vinyl bags and tucked the package carefully under a gap in the fence.

Mask on, Jack guessed he was ready. Going it alone sounded stupid, but if Louise were involved he had no choice — something to do with the reckless things one gets up to in the name of love or infatuation or whatever it was they had between them.

Next door to the Hotel Excelsior, the Monarch Theatre was a huge, glitzy hall that’d seen better days, but still looked a million bucks. There were art-deco details highlighted in silver against black tiles and a lighted diamond sitting atop a single tower.

On the marquee out the front was a poster of a vampish girl in fishnets promoting some musical called Footlight Frenzy, but at three a.m. the place was closed to business.

Down a narrow side street that ran alongside the theatre was parked a fancy silver, hard-top 1937 Saoutchik Hispano-Suiza H6C ‘Xenia’ Streamliner, looking more like an airplane than a car since it was commissioned by André Dubonnet — a World War I fighter pilot and heir to the Dubonnet aperitif and cognac business — with styling done by aerodynamics expert Jean Andreau.

Near that, some fool had kindly left a side door unlocked.

It was dark inside, but minor illumination here and there allowed Jack to see. He wandered into the central aisle of an auditorium likely to seat a thousand. After scanning the shadows, he then strolled slowly toward the stage. Like the phone call, none of this rang right at all. He’d just reached the orchestra pit when there was a loud clapping sound and two spotlights switched on somewhere far above — one highlighting him, the other the stage.

There were three people on a podium, soaking up the illumination. One of them he recognized — Prima Ballerina.

Beside her was a tall, Teutonic-looking male bodybuilder in a tight jumpsuit, with flaxen curls shaped in a Prince Valiant cut, a coiled whip at the right hip, and a large Nazi swastika on his chest.

Rounding out this posse was a wiry guy wearing an olive-green, mid-twentieth-century communist army uniform, drab as dust. He had his cap down over his eyes and a tight brown belt around the waist — could’ve been Cuban or North Korean, for all Jack was able to tell.

Behind them were a painted set and a few props that looked like they described a rural medieval hamlet in Bavaria.

The Nazi clearly aspired to be ringleader. He stepped forward with a self-satisfied mien and poked a big handgun, something like a German Mauser, in Jack’s direction — using the flag on his costume as a bull’s-eye.

“Make no sudden move. Stand as still as the wind.”

The man said this with a cartoon-cut-out inflection that predictably made his Vs sound like Ws and Fs —‘move’ became ‘moof’ and ‘wind’ segued into ‘vind’. It was also inconsistent, like he forgot to persist with the charade.

“The wind is still?” asked the Communist, with far better pronunciation, over the shoulder of his Kraut accomplice.

The Mauser dipped a few inches. “Hush, General Ching.” Then the pistol bounced back up. “I am Baron von Gatz. No doubt you have heard tell of me. The estimable Southern Cross, I presume?”

“Bingo. You’ll get extra gold stars from teacher for that quip.”

“Another smartarse,” sighed von Gatz’s henchman.

Jack noticed the Communist was hefting an assault rifle he’d never before had the pleasure of meeting. While taking a leaf out of the AK-47 design manual — there was a long, curving magazine beneath — this particular hardware was far from pretty.

“A simple bullet in the head will end the shenanigans,” added the man toting the eyesore.

“Donnerwetter! I said be quiet!” hissed von Gatz in a voice anyone could hear a mile off. His jaw muscles momentarily bulged, and then the Nazi took up a confident pose and even louder bluster. “Nein, General Ching. My way is far more complicated, time-consuming, und thereby…rewarding.”

“For whom?”

“For myself, of course.”

“Ingrate,” the other man sneered.

“Buffoon.”

Jack fought off a yawn. His watch said three-thirty — what did they expect? “Whenever you boys are ready.”

“Liberty-loving schwein,” said Baron von Gatz, apparently having returned his attention to the Equalizer since Jack couldn’t picture General Ching being a liberty-loving anything, “your ultimate fate is assured!”