“Smart lady — gal got that right,” the Brick chuckled.
“Now you sound sinister.”
“C’mon. We’re late fer a very important date.”
The two Equalizers headed upstairs, stopped at the third floor, and paraded to a door marked 3-D. It was open. Jack diplomatically stood aside while the Brick barged through.
An empty living room welcomed them. In the adjoining bedroom, amidst a chaos of overturned furniture and several abandoned handguns, carefully positioned next to a single bed, they found their quarry: a man in a red Stetson on a kitchen chair, arms tied with rope, and a pair of men’s blue underpants stuffed in his mouth.
“Classy,” Jack decided.
The Brick had the gag off in a second.
“Yer the prick that offed Bulkhead!” he boomed.
“That sad-sack metal tosser?” The man in the red hat rotated his jaw, testing it out. “Jerk believed in Never Never Land.”
“How many other Capes?”
“Huh?”
The Equalizer grabbed him around the throat. “How many others’ve you killed?”
“Brick?” said Jack. “Maybe take it easy.”
“Lemme paste ‘im one — lemme use ‘im as me very own ninety-nine cent giant, life-size karate practice dummy.”
Their prisoner pulled free from his fist. “Ow! Leggo! I’ll talk. Fuck.”
Suspicious, the Brick stood back.
“Let me think now,” the man deliberated, hardly appreciative. “Gotta be at least one dozen I know about. Tin man. Guy in a bath, another in a billboard. The man we roasted, and the one we refrigerated. That was funny — oh, you haven’t found him yet? Called himself Bonfire, so we thought it ironic.”
Jack was staring at him. “We?”
“Me. Me. I’m crazy. Always mixing up my pronouns.”
Fed up, the Brick leaned in again and shoved forward the man’s head, making his hat fall off onto the floor.
“Shite, you were right again,” Jack’s partner said, indicating the three-by-two ‘p’ just below the shirt collar at the back. “Bloke’s a bloody Blando. Think me whole belief system’s gone bust.”
“Hold on,” Jack responded.
He stuck a finger in his mouth, and then reached over. The man formerly in the red hat looked horrified —“Keep your saliva to yourself,” he yelped — as Jack rubbed at the ‘p’. It smudged, like all good tattooed letters don’t.
“Counterfeit.”
“Fuck you!” Their prisoner spat back, a globule hitting Jack’s boot, and then he peered at the ceiling. “Googly!” When nothing changed, his face skidded from a sneer to a close cousin of crestfallen.
“Lemme guess,” Jack said. “Password doesn’t work.”
“Yer tellin’ me ‘Googly’ is the creep’s open sesame? Corny as.”
Jack forced a smile. “Since things’ve been screwy here in Heropa over the past few days, I guess it goes both ways — for them, as much as us.”
The Brick glanced his way. “But who’s them, kiddo?”
In return, the other Equalizer raised one eyebrow. “Let’s find out. No emergency exits for this bugger, Mister B.”
“Lovely.”
Straight away, the Brick cuffed the man across the face. Jack could hear a cheek bone snap.
“Who the flyin’ fig are ya?”
Their prisoner merely glared back, some of the defiance returning. “Say…don’t you losers know what your little world has become?”
“Pray enlighten us,” muttered the Brick, and then he slapped again.
“Hurts,” the prisoner said in a small voice.
“Don’t worry, tough guy. It ain’t gonna hurt fer long.”
Jack wasn’t comfortable with this, no matter how much he pretended otherwise. “Just tell us ‘real men’ what we want to know.”
“Okay, okay.”
Silence.
“We’re listening.”
Nothing.
“Still listening.”
No word at all. Jack looked at the Brick. “The man’s whistling Dixie, wasting our time. Rearrange his face.”
“Okay! Okay! Stop!”
“So — why’re you here?”
“Why? Why, you ask?”
“Brick.”
The man latterly in the red hat shook his head. “It’s a testing ground. The bigwigs at security services must’ve stumbled across the place ’cause, next thing you know, we get a memo at Management Control Division, yacking about a new direction in road-testing for its agents, something a little offbeat and fun to boot — offing superheroes with offensive taste in dress-sense.”