In Hero Years... I'm Dead Delux Edition (6 page)

I glanced at Grant. “That the rock guy, Gravé?” I pronounced it like the hole in the ground.

“Grah-
vey
. Publicist thought it sounded better.” Grant’s smile grew. “Musician by day–well, by midday anyway–hero after hours. He doesn’t maintain a secret identity.”

Gravé held his hands up. “You know the rules, ladies. Outside the gym or no more exclusives.”

The women groaned, and the lights died.

“How can he have exclusives with two reporters at the same time?”

“One covers music, the other crime fighting. He comes here for peace and quiet.”

“High-powered clientele.”

“He’s also my son.” Grant waved him over and hugged him tightly. Father dwarfed son, but the hug was returned with equal affection. They broke the embrace and Grant kept his right hand hidden behind the young man’s back.

“This is Tim Robinson. Knew him a long time ago. He also knew your mother.”

I shook Gravé’s hand. “My pleasure. I don’t know your music. I’ve been on the road.”

“Where?”

“Europe. The Balkans.”

“Cool. I have a fan club in Montenegro.” He grinned easily, but his dark eyes watched me warily.

“Didn’t get over there.”

“Cool, man.” He nodded to the both of us. “Came to get a shower, do some scanning and bidding.”

Grant nodded. “Heard from Andie?”

“On the Cape. Beached whale. I talked her out of digging a canal.”

“What was she thinking?”

He smiled easily. “Like you wouldn’t have done it, Pop, and thrown up affordable housing and a hospital with the spare dirt.”

I smiled. “Wow, he really
is
your kid.”

“He and his sister are the joys of my life.” He turned to me. “Did you ever…”

“I know. Now. As of two days ago.”

“So she told you to come? Don’t answer. She must have. You wouldn’t have looked me up on your own.” Grant studied me again. “What do you want?”

“I need someone I can trust.”

“And you think that’ll be me?”

Gravé offered me his hand again. “Clearly you’ve got old times to talk about. Boring. Nice meeting you.”

“And you.”

“See you, dad.”

“I love you. Tell your sister to call me.”

“Check. Later.”

Gravé had given his father time to think, and time to hide his right hand again. “We need to do some catching up, Tim.”

“Your office?”

“Not here. Too many interruptions. Let’s get some coffee.” He turned around. “Terry, hold the fort. I’ll be back later.”

Terry waved, then went back to haranguing his charge.

We didn’t talk much on the walk. The idea that he and I were going to get caught up was for his son’s consumption–though I doubted the kid bought it. There’s not a kid alive who can’t read his parents like a book. It’s the only way to survive childhood.

Getting caught up implied chumminess, but Graviton and I hadn’t palled around back in the day. Part of that was the age difference. He and the others were already pushing fifty and I’d been was half that. I used to think they were pretty old, but now that I’d gotten to their age, it didn’t seem old. Then, at other times, I
did
feel like a fossil.

Halfway down the block Grant got us an outside table toward the corner of a coffee shop’s patio. We ordered and made small talk about people walking by. We avoided anything of substance. Maybe he was trying to find some sort of common ground or something. He was the type to at least try.

Finally our coffee arrived. He pried the lid off his and blew on it. Ironic. He could bask in the heart of the sun and was acting like the coffee could burn him. He added a couple packets of some sim-sugar and then fake dairy. I just took mine hot and black. Over the years I’d learned not to be choosy.

Grant leaned forward, his voice low. “Here it is. I never really liked you. I was opposed to your joining C4. I would have blackballed you, but Nighthaunt persuaded me. He said you were recommended highly. Your inclusion would set a precedent. I figured he hoped Redhawk would be invited to join, too, in a couple years. I didn’t think we needed you–you were just a pale imitation of him.”

“
Any
normal mortal with a bag of tricks was a Nighthaunt wannabe.”

“Well, here’s another thing. I never
trusted
you. Neither did L’Angyle. I was against trusting you with my secret identity, but I did it anyway. That was how we built trust in C4. You didn’t reciprocate.”

“Not for the reasons you imagine.” I met his stare. “I never betrayed your secret, and I could have. In fact, I knew it three years before you invited me to join the Capital City Crime Crusaders.”

Grant sat back. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Doesn’t mean I believe. How?”

“Simple.” I smiled at him over my coffee. “Sunscreen.”

Chapter Six

I’d seen that look in his eyes before, just once–a second before he’d used his therma-vision to deli-slice a tank. “Sunscreen?”

“Sunscreen.” I sipped some coffee, delaying enough to let him stew. “You covered your tracks really well. Grant Stone, world-renown travel writer and food critic, could travel anywhere–often did so secretly–and just happened to be in places where Graviton dealt with emergencies. You documented your travel perfectly. You had receipts for everything, on down to hotel housekeeping tips and packets of breath-mints. But nothing for sunscreen. You never needed it, you never thought of it.”

Grant closed his eyes. “Good Heavens! I had others look things over, help me cover my tracks. Even Nighthaunt gave me a clean bill.”

“Sure, like
he’s
ever seen the sun.”

“You have a point there.” He looked at me again. “I still don’t like the idea that you broke into my accountant’s office to get this information.”

“I didn’t.”

“No reason to lie about it.”

“Which is why I’m not.” I shook my head. “I temped for your accountant. It was good money. Added bonus: he did the books for a mob guy skimming from union pension funds.”

An edge crept into his voice. “Why did you go after me?”

“I was testing a theory.”

“Do tell.”

“A secret identity allows you to have a life. It protects your family, your friends. You had a solid one. Very tough to crack. It took me over a year and a half, paring down possibilities. And even when I narrowed things down, I couldn’t eliminate the Lamont Cranston factor.”

“The Shadow from the old radio serials?”

“Yes and no.” I set my coffee down. “On the radio, the Shadow was Lamont Cranston. In the pulp novels, the Shadow had merely
borrowed
Cranston’s identity. It looked like you were Graviton, but I couldn’t be sure Grant Stone hadn’t just lent Graviton his name to cover his travel. You’re home writing, he’s off saving the world.”

I leaned forward. “But that’s not the theory. See, any secret identity, no matter how good, can be cracked. When that happens, it’s all gone. I didn’t like that. Too vulnerable. Once I broke yours, the alternative became obvious. Don’t have a single secret identity, have
many
. Wear them like clothes and discard them as needed. The moment I thought one was blown, I dropped it.”

Grant nodded slowly, his expression easing. “So you made up Tim Robinson on the fly. We accepted it. Nighthaunt checked it out, gave you a clean bill. It wasn’t until after you’d gone, that we discovered how thin a tissue it was. Why didn’t you trust us?”

“I wasn’t raised to do much trusting.” Leaning back, I opened my hands. “You said I was a pale imitation of Nighthaunt. True, in methods and attitude. You always believed in the good of humanity; that people are not evil and selfish at their core. Like Nighthaunt, I tended toward the view that we’re more sinner than saint. You can be born good and trained to evil.”

“Yet another reason Nighthaunt wanted you in C4. Nature versus nurture.” He smiled briefly, then his eyes narrowed. “Didn’t you ever have anyone you wanted to protect?”

“Yeah.”

He looked at me expectantly.

I changed the subject. “Nothing makes sense here, Grant. What happened?”

“You really have been out of circulation, haven’t you?”

“Buried, remember?”

He leaned forward, keeping his voice low. “Two years after you vanished the villains formed their own counterpart to C4: Capital City Crime Cartel. The Al Qaeda of Villainy. Sinisterion was behind it, but that was never proved. They started a crime wave that took control of everything: rackets, drugs, prostitution, extortion, kidnapping and murder, all under central control. Kidnapping became especially lucrative.

“The Technomancer kidnapped the Mayor’s son and dared us to come get him. Argus Square, huge battle. It’s all been rebuilt. He’d put the kid in an explosive vest. I zipped in, pulled it off the kid, realized I’d somehow armed it, and flew straight up. I wanted to keep everyone out of blast radius.”

He paused for a moment, then pulled his right hand from beneath the table.

I stared. “Oh my God.”

His last three fingers had been blown off. White-worm scars writhed over the rest of the flesh. His thumb worked, but the index finger remained stiff.

“The Technomancer had anticipated me. The vest went off in two stages. The first exploded a small charge around a sample of
jadarite
. Took my fingers. Laid open my chest. I still have shards next to my heart. Knocked me out and I started to come down, the main charge intact.

“Golden Guardian and Goldie saw and flew up. Terry got me. Goldie snatched the vest away, flew up further. The rest of the vest detonated. Scattered pieces of Goldie from the Fishkyll to North River, all over the North End. Shrapnel from his armor killed two on the ground, wounded fourteen.”

His eyes grew distant; his hand returned beneath the table. “Terry was taking me to the hospital where my wife worked, figuring she could put me back together. Nighthaunt stopped him. They made a decision. Forever changed my life.”

I shook my head. “What?”

“Nighthaunt said he couldn’t take Graviton to the hospital. If Graviton were to die, there would be no stopping the Cartel. People would despair. Chaos would reign.”

It made vague sense. Graviton going down would be like the sun exploding. That sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen.

“So…”

“So they brought me to the hospital as Grant. I’d been among those wounded in the blast, you see. And they demanded that my wife work on me, world-famous surgeon that she was.”

I slowly nodded. “But she couldn’t work on you because of the conflict of interest. With her ability to work magic, she could have gotten the
jadarite
out, repaired the damage.”

“She could have made me whole again.” He shrugged. “Probably not the fingers, but everything else. As it was, they got as much of the
jadarite
out they dared. I have a couple pieces deep, near my heart. I exert myself, terrible angina. Spasms. Things just don’t work right.”

“And if Graviton had appeared at the ER…”

“She could have saved me. Maybe.” Grant shook his head. “The stuff near my heart might have even defied her skills–magical and otherwise. That’s why she’s not gone after them since. Too risky.”

Grant sighed. “As it was she did save four others who were wounded worse than me, but every day she looked at my scars. She couldn’t stand it. She thought she’d failed me.”

“So she retired, too?”

“Yeah, to Africa. The day-to-day got to be too difficult. Last I knew Doctor Julia Angle is running a clinic, saving lots of innocent children. I don’t see her. The kids do, sometimes, but only as civilians.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be.” The edge returned to his voice. “She never trusted you, either. She did look for you, though, after you disappeared. She used her powers to find your essence, but she couldn’t get enough. She said it was too thin, like you never existed.”

“Nice that she tried.” I frowned. “So when you blew on your coffee, that wasn’t for show?”

“No. It takes a lot to scald me, but it happens. Pizza mostly.” He thumped a fist to his chest. “And I can’t eat jalapenos the way I used to. That’s part of getting old–something I can’t deny.”

“Why the line of gyms?”

“I rehabbed hard. Terry helped. He’d gone insane with grief. We found out later that Goldie had just agreed to marry him. Helping me gave him focus and put his life back together. He retired from Vecktech and the game. Opening a gym let me write off the equipment. It’s become a good business. We’re training the next crop.” He appraised me with a glance. “It’s not an old man’s game, you know.”

I shrugged. “I’m not here to come out of retirement.”

“Make yourself believe that. C4 collapsed after I retired. Most of the other members hung up their masks over the next decade. Nighthaunt tried a comeback about ten years ago. Got his rear-end handed to him by gangbangers. He says Doctor Sinisterion set him up. I doubt it. Sinisterion vanished before I got out of the hospital. He only resurfaced in the last year with his book. Rumor has it he was consulting with foreign governments on maintaining order in the war zones. Now it’s just the new kids in the new order.”