“I guess all we’ve gotta do is wait for them to polish off each other. Equalizers, dumb-arse Rotters — I don’t care. But if it’s the Equalizers that win, we’re in luck. In case you lost count, there’s only three of them now. Dunno about you, boss, but I’ve been waitin’ a long time to take down the bastards.”
Kahn frowned. “Don’t be in such a rush. We need the Equalizers, Irv. Who else can stand against the Rotters? We don’t have the firepower.”
“Which is why we wait, like I says. But you’re wrong. We do have the firepower.” Forbush lifted a well-fingered piece of paper. “In the evidence-room armoury, all the leftovers from Bop fights — nutty things like an atom igniter, a Vacutex, remote-control gravi-polar-izers, an MCD99 pistol, demolo and negato guns, a cosmic rod an’ cosmic cube, and something grandstandingly calling itself the ultimate nullifier — whatever the heck that is.”
“You’re forgetting the vibra-gun and several pairs of x-ray specs.”
“Oh, yeah. Different list.”
“And you have instruction manuals for them?”
Forbush looked down as he folded the paper into quarters. “No.”
“You realize you could vaporize half the city with any one of those gadgets?”
“I guess. ‘Nother coffee?”
“Sure. That’s safer.”
Detective Forbush got up, headed to the tiny kitchenette, and started manhandling a large blue, orange, white and red tin of Maxwell House roaster fresh.
While he was thus occupied, Kahn allowed his eyes to wash over the assembled desks and the other officers — good people, all of them, but worked to the bone.
Typing up something nearby was Inspector Rudd, for example, a fine man with a family of six hungry kids he never saw. The ever-restless, unacceptably long-haired Officer Norrin Radd had shelved plans of quitting the force to pursue his dream of a professional surfing career — for what? Some miguided loyalty to his mates here?
And Detective Dan Carey, who sat on the other side of the room, loading and unloading his police pistol with an agitated look, an expression he’d nurtured since his wife Marla had eloped with a man calling himself Albino Joe.
Too many cases, generating myriad personal problems, without sufficient boots on the ground. Yet still the mayor talked of cutbacks.
On the wall next to a sagging mantelpiece crowded with plastic Tiki gods and a pair of kissing dolls, on the other side of a legit picture of public enemy #1 Hogarr Ditko, there was a hand-drawn poster with a black silhouette of a Cape crossed out, and ‘CAPE-FREE ZONE’ written above in a thick red texta. Near that, an Equalizers logo had been converted into a dartboard — haggard from overuse, currently with a yellow plastic dart dead centre, skewering the lightning bolt, it sat next to a poster for a local bout that announced ‘Fight!! Karnak vs. Krushki!’, with betting odds beneath.
He should have taken down all three things days ago. But better to have this shit out in the open than festering somewhere private-like.
Kahn had his reason for sticking up for the Capes — the Big O saved his life.
Copped a bullet meant for him, fired from his blind side by some low-life gutter monkey robbing a grocery store; the Cape took it in his stride, obviously hurt, but disappeared into the sky after first knocking the crim senseless. Kahn had seen the hero’s blood on the street, never got a chance to thank him.
The funny thing was that he remembered this, when not so long ago no one else would.
There was a time everyone — bar himself — forgot everything on a daily basis. He’d rise and shine at four a.m. before work, look out the window at dawn, and see a brand new Heropa City that sparkled — all and any damage from the previous day’s shenanigans restored. And he noticed, whereas none of his friends or co-workers batted an eyelid. For a long time, he believed Capes did this overnight as a kind of service, like the elves and the shoemaker story.
Kahn told no one. Didn’t wish to rock the boat or disquiet other people. Briefing his officers on the same cases every morning — with nobody recalling a goddamned detail — could be a drag, but it was the way things were. He knew no differently.
Recently, however, there was no need for the morning briefings. Kahn felt a hole in his routine, it made him uncomfortable.
Recently, everyone else did remember, and that was when this Cape backlash got in full swing and well out of hand.
The meeting the day before at Mayor Brown’s office, upstairs on the thirty-ninth floor, was supposed to be a briefing about the case.
In front of the mayor, Chief of Police O’Hara, District Attorney Paul Garrett, State Prison Warden Williams, and financial bigwig Donald Wright — along with Garrett’s secretary Edith, who took minutes — Kahn gave an abridged rundown on the progress of Cape killings, their hypotheses (unfounded guesswork) and police-artist sketches of the bodies that could still be sketched. In the case of Kid Kindle it was a charred skeleton — ironic, since the teenager’s talent was manhandling fire.