In Hero Years... I'm Dead Delux Edition (10 page)

“I trust you because I do. It’s because you trust me, or trusted me.” I shrugged weakly. “The last two decades taught me that to trust is to hurt or be hurt. There’s people out there who could hurt you because you’re associated with me.”

Selene sat again on the edge of the bed. “Why would they do that?”

“Because they can.”

“You need a better answer.” She took my left hand in hers. “Let me tell you something about trust. I did trust you. And then you disappeared. I tried to keep trusting you, so I waited. I tried not to worry. Then I did worry. I started looking. Not only had you vanished, but all traces had vanished.

“Six months after you disappeared, L’Angyle came to me. She told me about Tim Robinson. I checked. Nothing. There were hints of maybe a couple other identities, but just hints. You simply didn’t exist.”

“And you weren’t sure what you were trusting?”

She glanced down. “I’d trusted you. It was a fun game, not knowing who you would be when we would meet. People wonder if the costume is the assumed role, or the civilian is. I wondered, too, sometimes; but with you, we didn’t have to be one or the other. We could just be us. And I thought maybe…”

She sighed. “But there wasn’t any
you
. You didn’t have an identity. No anchor.”

“No point of vulnerability.” I squeezed her hand. “It’ll sound like a lie, but until I met you, I never
wanted
an identity. Whenever there was danger, I could run. I could drop who I’d been, or use that identity as a trap. My identities were just more gadgets. But with you…”

I hesitated, swallowing hard past the lump in my throat. “I’d signed the leasing papers for a small shop on the Gold Coast, near the Village. Second floor, dark, dingy. Watch and clock repair, jewelry repair, appraisals. Milos Castigan–older, a bit crazy, but punctual for appointments. I could hang there, work on gadgets–I’m good at that. Need a toaster fixed, I’m your man. I wanted the anchor. I was willing to be vulnerable but…”

She let my hand go.

“Selene, I’m not lying to you.”

She pressed a hand to her mouth and stood again. Her shoulders rose and fell in a sob, maybe two. I turned away. For privacy. Mine. Tears hurt tracking over bruises.

Finally she turned back, keeping her face shadowed. “I believe you because I want to believe you. It’s just twenty years flashed…” Her voice trailed off and her arms crossed again. “Do you remember the last thing you said to me?”

“I told you I’d be back.”

“Men.” She shook her head. “Yes, you did say that, but your very last words. Do you remember?”

I shook my head.

“You said, ‘Be good.’ That’s it. Be good.”

“Yeah. Okay. I woulda said that.”

“I’m sure you didn’t remember because you didn’t put much weight on it, but I did. When you didn’t come back and didn’t come back, and even before that, I replayed our last meeting over and over. Daydream stuff, fantasy stuff. And when you didn’t return, I found something else to cling to.
Be good
.” She chuckled lightly. “I lived by that. I said it every day to our daughter. ‘Be good’ built all this. Granted, motherhood and my prior lifestyle didn’t work together, but I wanted you to be proud of me.”

“I am.”

“No, don’t say that. You can’t. You don’t know enough. Toss Hallmark greeting card platitudes at me, I’ll throw you out of here.”

“I reserve the right…”

“Reserve whatever makes you happy. I need you to understand some things. We aren’t the people we were twenty years ago. They’re dead. Now, I accept that you’re trying to come to grips with how the world has changed. I’ve been changing with it. It’s going to take you time. I accept that. I’m willing to help you adjust, but I’m not going to be Sancho Panza to your Don Quixote–and I’m not your Dulcinea.”

“Selene…”

“No, I’m not done, and you’re not ready to have the whole of this conversation, but let me ask you, does whatever you think you came back here for really matter? Is it going to give you back twenty years? You know it’s not going to make you young again–at even at your peak, you’d have had a hard time with the competition today. So, why is it important? Is it important enough to get killed over?”

There, in a nutshell, she’d nailed it. Why
had
I come back? It clearly wasn’t to walk back into her life, kiss her on the cheek, snag a beer from the fridge and ask if I’d missed anything. I’d certainly used memories of her like a blanket to keep me warm at nights, but Selene hadn’t flashed through my mind when I was given my choice of destinations.

Revenge is probably one of the more stupid and self-indulgent motives–but it’s also strong as hell. Why is that? You can dress revenge up with the idea that your enemies have to be brought to justice, that they have to pay or they’ll do it to someone else; but half the time they might not even have noticed what they did to you. Hell, if they’d done it to you at another time, in another place,
you
might not have noticed it.

Revenge is really a desire to make yourself whole. If someone does you dirt, they’ve made you subordinate. They assert their superiority. They make you their bitch. You want to level the field. You want to bring things back to even, or maybe get one up on them. Face it, every good revenge plan ends with the victim putting the victimizer away forever. If you show any mercy at all, you know you’ll get bitten in the ass.

But would vengeance make me whole? It wouldn’t give me back twenty years.
Old
wasn’t going to go away. Vengeance might make me feel good–which really means
superior
–for a while, but that wouldn’t give me two decades of birthday parties with my daughter, or Father’s Day cards or even a single day of protecting someone like Randy Singh.

And it didn’t help, of course, that even if my vengeance would mean
they
would never hurt anyone else ever again, my lack of knowing who
they
were made the whole vengeance thing moot.

So if all that was silly and stupid and pointless, why couldn’t I let revenge go?

I think I knew. I think it was because vengeance had been the promise I’d made to myself. It was the bargaining chip. Whenever I wanted to lay down and die, I didn’t because that would mean that
they
would get away with it. All those cold nights, shivering, having given away the last crust of bread to some wretch even more miserable than myself, those were all in the hopes that if there was a merciful God, He’d see my kindness, and He’d grant me a favor. He’d let me live. He’d let me get free. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord, but couldn’t He let me be His agent just for once?

And if He wouldn’t, I was pretty sure His competition would.

Somewhere, then, deep down inside, lurked the certainty that if I abandoned the quest to find those who had betrayed me, I’d die.

As simple and stupid as it was, the answer shook me. My aches and bruises mocked me. Selene was right. Luck had kept me alive, not the drive for vengeance. And that same drive would likely get me killed.

So I’d die without it,
and
it would kill me.

But not absolutely. Probably.

And yet, in that slim sliver of a chance, I found hope.

I clung to it.

I looked up at her. “’Be good,’ was the last word you had from me?”

“Have you heard nothing I’ve said?”

“It’s percolating.”

“It’s festering, more like, and you’ll purge it.” She sighed. “You’re not ready.”

I gave her a weak smile. “You think I ever will be?”

“Yes. It’s going to take something profound to get you there. I’m just afraid of what that’s going to do to you.”

I opened my arms. “Grant told you what saw when he peeked inside. Could they do more?”

“They can hurt you in ways you can’t even imagine.” She closed her eyes for a second, then nodded. “Yes, ‘be good,’ was the last thing I heard from you.”

“No other messages. No hints, no comments, no post cards?”

Selene studied me, her eyes tightening. “No, nothing. Not the least little hint.”

“Okay.” I frowned. “Eight years ago, Stockholm. Police recovered three stolen Picasso oils. One was slashed and destroyed.”

She nodded. “It was a forgery. The paintings were recovered from a dumpster, rolled in a case. A radical Crypto-conservative movement had stolen them from the National Museum. Held them for ransom.”

“No reason for the one to be cut.”

“The art world thought it very fortuitous that only the forgery had been destroyed. Prior to that no one knew the piece was a forgery.”

“Except you.”

Her head came up. “And you.”

I nodded. Faint memories of an evening together, laughing our way through a reception at the Capital City Museum of Fine Art. She was lethal in a stunning red gown. My rented a tux looked shabby by comparison. We were nobody really–she’d gotten the invite through her work with the museum. That night everyone wanted to know who we were. And the next day we’d be utterly forgotten.

As we toured and listened to the museum’s director carry on with his description of the works, she’d told me the picture was forged. I never doubted her. And I’d remembered.

“A post card would have been more effective.”

“I didn’t have any stamps.”

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“Would you?”

She laughed aloud, full of surprise and relief. “You don’t get it. I
have
let it go. I let it go years ago. ‘Be good,’ meant I had to. Grant may have told you that heroing was a young man’s game. I’ll tell you that it’s a stupid man’s game. Running around constantly afraid of being exposed. Risking limb, if not life, for what? Points in a rating system?”

“That can’t be the only reason…”

“Oh no, it’s not. Sure, some people still come into it full of dreams of public service and helping someone, but that doesn’t mean much when an enemy pushes you off a building or catches you upside the head with a pipe-wrench. For the others, it’s all about money and fame.

“In the old days heroes financed things one of two ways: the family trust or the way you used to do it–skim some here and there. Grant never liked that about you. Nighthaunt either. Others understood. You drop a drug dealer. He’s got twenty thousand in loose cash, why not put it to good use?”

I frowned. “I used to give a lot of that away.”

“I know, you were a regular Victims’ Aid Society. I found that out about you after. That isn’t the way it is now, though. You know how the majority of them make money? Revenue sharing from the ads on the Murdoch, pro-rated by points. And the big guys? Endorsements. Toy deals, movies, Murdoch series, merchandise, public appearances. Cape and a cowl and you can make big bucks on the motivational speaking circuit. They write books, too. Dr. Sinisterion just did one.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that
you
can’t be an earner in this system. That’s all the system has room for. But you’re not going to believe that. We’re going to have to go Dickens on you.”

“What?”

“Ghost of Christmas past, and all that.” Selene nodded solemnly. “A week from now Redhawk is being inducted into the Hall of Fame. You’re taking your daughter to the festivities. If that doesn’t put it all into perspective... well, don’t bother coming back.”

Chapter Ten

Selene continued to be a gracious hostess. I began to get up and around. A week after the beating I was fairly ambulatory. By mid-week I was taking walks outside the, though I was using a walking stick. In my mind it became a short
bo
. It really was just a cane, and I needed to use it. Muscles were protesting enough that my balance wasn’t always what it should be.

I didn’t watch much of the Murdoch. Unlike most places, Selene’s house had a way to turn the machines off. The device on the line wasn’t just a power switch. It clearly had the cable company thinking the machine was on, even though the screen had gone black. I never asked, she never told, but I gathered my admonition to “be good” had its limits.

Selene sent someone to rescue my clothes from the Excelsior, then she bought me some more. She also brought Mister Evan in to cut my hair. The man was flamboyantly gay and harried. He carefully explained to Selene that he had “a full schedule, what with the ceremony coming up and…” He’d have gone on but she handed him a wad of cash and he got down to business. I only balked at having my hair colored, but otherwise he had his way with me. He updated my look, but left my hair longer than Gravé wore his.

In fact, the week went very well save in one area: Selene’s relationship with Victoria. They both had Graviton-class wills and the building shook when they clashed. I didn’t actually
hear
the arguments, but I’m pretty sure any mentalists in the area were going to be bleeding from every pore.

Quite simply condensed, Victoria had no intention of taking “the sperm donor” anywhere. So, as the limo pulled up outside the gallery on that fateful Saturday morning, I emerged nicely, though casually, dressed. My daughter, wearing boots, a sleeveless t-shirt, shorts and carrying a canvas bag, followed silently, sullenly and as cold as the Sphinx–especially after Dr. Sinisterion had it moved to Antarctica.