It's Superman! A Novel (31 page)

Lex Luthor heard about the crime during idle chitchat with an old-time ward-heeler in the district.

The following afternoon Lex visited Mrs. O’Shea in the House of Detention for Women in Greenwich Village and made her a proposition: in return for his covering her debt to the city and ensuring that all criminal charges against her would be dropped, she would come to work for him. She started to answer yes immediately, but he raised his hand and stopped her. “No, listen to me first,” he said. “If you come to work for me, you have to know something.”

“That you’re a criminal. Yes,” she said, “I guessed as much. I understand what that means, Alderman, and I accept your offer.”

Lex never forgave her for that, for having “guessed as much.” And how had she guessed? Of course, he asked her.

“It takes one to know one,” she said. Then she said, “Do you remember the first time we met?”

“The first time we’ve met, madam, is today. Right now.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have said
met.
The first time you
saw
me.”

He was waiting with one eyebrow lifted.

“You saw me at the high school’s Christmas Bazaar last December. You were there shaking hands. I was manning the silent-auction table.” She took out a cigarette but he told her to put it away. She laughed. But did as she was told. “I saw you ask the principal who I was.”

Lex suddenly grinned. “You’re right. I did. I said, ‘My God, that woman over there just gave me a start. She looks exactly the way my mother looked at fifty.’ ”

Mrs. O’Shea’s face drained.

She never would—or ever did—quite forgive him for that . . .

This Saturday evening while Lex is away having dinner with Joseph P. Kennedy and Gloria Swanson, Mrs. O’Shea avails herself of the Waldorf premises—bathes in the master bath with the solid-gold taps, fixes a chicken sandwich and a potent Manhattan, and then gets comfortable on the sofa in the living room, settling in with the Nero Wolfe novel she’s currently reading. She hasn’t gotten far, three or four chapters, and is looking forward to finishing it tonight.

Then the telephone rings.

Mrs. O’Shea checks her wristwatch—ten past eight—and considers letting it ring out, but it could be her lord and master checking in.

“Luthor residence.”

“Let me talk to the alderman.”

“I’m sorry, the alderman is not at home. And for your information, whoever you are, when you call someone you should say who’s calling. That’s just common courtesy. Who is this, please?”

But whoever it is—it sounds like a young man—says, “I’ll call back” and breaks the connection.

He calls back ten seconds later.

“Where’s he gone to? When’s he coming home? Do you have a number where I can reach him?”

“Didn’t I just instruct you in telephone etiquette?”

“Lady, don’t start.”

“I’m hanging up right now. You’re just plain rude.”

“No, wait! My name is Steven Sandglass! Is this
Mrs.
Luthor?”

“This is Mr. Luthor’s personal assistant.”

“Can you tell me where he is? I need to talk to him—tonight.”

“Mr. Sandglass, I’m certainly not telling you where the alderman is. Just what exactly is the nature of your business with him?”

“The nature of my business? The nature of my
business,
lady, is that I want my father back. Your boss kidnapped my pop, and if he’s hurt him I swear to God all the stuff in this envelope I have right here in my hand is going straight to the mayor. And I’m not bluffing!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I want to speak with Lex Luthor tonight.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Then the next time you see him, he’ll be in jail.”

Mrs. O’Shea takes a sip from her Manhattan, switches the receiver to her left ear. “Listen to me—what did you say your name was?”

“Sandglass, Steven Sandglass, but people call me Spider.”

“And how old are you, Mr. Sandglass?”

“What’s that got to do—?”

“How
old?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Then people shouldn’t be calling you Spider. Now listen to me—are you listening? If you would like to live to be twenty-five, I wouldn’t go around making these kinds of threats, not to me, not to Alderman Luthor, and not in the city of New York.”

“I want my father back. And then he can have the file. I’m calling back in an hour, and Lex Luther better answer this phone.”

“Don’t you dare hang up your phone.”

“Who are you, telling me what to do?”

He hangs up.

Mrs. O’Shea replaces the handset, then stands up from her chair, plants her hands on her hips, and glares at the telephone. “You ring right back, do you
hear
me?”

The phone rings.

“Don’t you
dare
hang up on me again,” she says after she’s snatched up the receiver again.

“Mrs. O’Shea?”

“Oh, it’s
you.”

“Yes, it’s me. Has Paulie phoned in?”

“No,” she says, “he has not.”

“Any other calls?”

“No, sir.”

“Then who was it that hung up on you?”

“I do have a personal life.”

“Oh? How nice for you. But Mrs. O? Do not conduct it on my telephone.”

“Good night, Mr. Luthor,” she says and presses the disconnect toggle.

Then she looks at her book and shrugs.
The League of Frightened Men
will have to wait.

Then the phone rings again.

5

In Los Angeles, where it is just a few minutes past five in the afternoon, Captain Gould is staring at a big hole in the exterior wall of a cell on the felony block of the county jail, while behind him a guard is saying there were a dozen reports of a guy in tights and a cape floating around outside, looking into one cell after another until he found the one he was looking for.
This
one.

Gould turns around. “Did you say a
floating
man?”

“Yes, sir, and he had a big red
S
on the front of his shirt.”

On his way out of Willi Berg’s cell, Captain Gould notices an empty Camels packet lying crumpled on the painted cement floor.

6

Earlier this evening at dinner, Joe Kennedy told Lex that while Hitler was clearly a lunatic, Nazism was a sound, even a
scientific
response to the world economic crisis and the very real threat of international communism. He said there were executives and leaders in Germany, both in the Reich and in private corporations, that wide-awake Americans could feel altogether comfortable dealing with. “I’ll gladly arrange for any contacts you might wish to make,” he said. Lex said he did appreciate the kind offer and would definitely take him up on it. He was, he said, most interested in raising investment capital. Kennedy leaned across the restaurant table, eager to hear more. Lex smiled, paused significantly, then said, “I’m involved in something that you, yourself, may like to own a piece of. Considering that it’s certain to be the next . . . essential thing.”

“You mean television?” said Kennedy.

Lex pursed his lips, retracted them; leaned back in his chair, spread his hands, and said: “Robots.”

“I love robots!” said Gloria Swanson.

“Of course you do,” said Lex.
“Everyone
does.”

And that included Joseph Kennedy, who could see to coughing up at least a quarter of a million dollars.

Altogether an excellent evening. Very excellent.

When he arrives back at the Waldorf just before midnight, Lex is in an expansive mood. But the moment he steps into the foyer of his suite in the Towers his face drops. The nine framed linoleum cuts by Reginald Marsh (rainy street scenes) have been removed from their hooks and are stacked on the floor. Impaled now on the brass picture hooks are photostatic copies of several incorporation documents along with private laboratory reports whose subject, he sees upon closer inspection, is fingerprint matching.

Slowly he follows the trail of documents down the hallway. Just outside his office, photographs are tacked up around the doorframe the way some people display Christmas cards. They are pictures, many looking as though they were taken from behind potted palms, of Lex Luthor huddled in conversations with Mussolini’s first cousin, with investment bankers Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker and a representative of a Berlin chemical factory, with two mafia godfathers and a notorious madam.

The door to Lex’s office, usually shut and locked, is partly open.

He pushes it the rest of the way with his fingertips.

Mrs. O’Shea is seated behind the desk. She has on a glen-plaid business suit, a white shirt, and a gray tie that Lex recognizes as his own. In front of her is a delicate hand-painted coffee cup on a saucer. A matching cup is lying on its rim on the white pile rug near a brown stain that still looks wet.

Also lying on the rug is the rigid body of a young man in his early twenties. His eyes bulge, and his clenched teeth are flecked with dried foam.

“Have a seat, Lex. We need to talk.”

“And this young man is . . . ?”

“Steven Sandglass. He said you kidnapped his father.”

“Steven Sandglass.”

“Yes. But called Spider by his friends. He brought over a certain envelope he thought you’d be interested in.”

“Ransom.”

“So he was hoping. Now won’t you have a seat?”

“Poison?”

Mrs. O’Shea blinks, then sits up straighter. “I convinced him I was shocked. Assured him that his father was still alive—he’s not, is he?”

“No.”

“Then I offered him a cup of coffee.”

“And now there’s a dead body in my office.” Lex stands near it, looking down. “What am I supposed to do about it?”

“You’ll figure something out.”

“I could, you know, remove all of those documents from the wall and call the cops. You poisoned your faithless young lover. He was about to dump you. It’ll be a scandal but I’ll survive.”

Mrs. O’Shea’s face goes slack. She stands up behind the desk. “You wouldn’t.”

“Why not? What’s the alternative?” He takes out his linen handkerchief, stoops down, and lays it over the coffee stain. He picks up the cup and sniffs. “I asked you, what’s my alternative course?”

“You call Paulie and he takes the body off the dumbwaiter in the basement, we get a professional carpet shampoo, and from now on I’m a full partner.”

“No,” says Lex. “I believe I’m still inclined to my suggestion. With the added element that you killed yourself afterward in fear of disgrace and the electric chair.”

“Try and make me.”

“He didn’t want money?”

“Apparently just his dad returned unharmed.”

Lex grins and finally sits down on one of the upholstered chairs along the wainscoting. “You know what’s funny?” says Lex.

“No, what’s funny?”

“I don’t even know your first name.”

“Helen. It’s Helen.”

He stretches out his legs, crosses his feet over his ankles, and stares at Spider Sandglass. “Helen,” says Lex. “Well, well.”

7

Before he was defrocked for giving VD to a tenth-grade parochial high school girl and then looting the poor box to pay her off not to squeal, Carl Krusada was one of several young good-looking curates at St. Rocco’s, the church Paulie Scaffa and his father attended. Because Carl was the youngest priest there, he’d been assigned to hear confessions in the church for two hours every Sunday evening. Nobody else at the rectory wanted to do it because most of the really good radio programs came on then. There was never much traffic in and out of the confessional on Sunday evening, and Carl used the time in between penitents to read; he’d long since given up reading his daily office and was working his way through the Studs Lonigan trilogy.

He was just a few pages into
Young Manhood
when he had his first visit from Paulie. That was eighteen months ago.

“If you think it’s funny, I don’t, and neither does my dad,” Paulie said through the confessional’s mesh screen. “What are you thinking, making a man of his age kneel at the altar reciting two hundred Hail Marys? That ain’t right. You having your fun or something?”

Carl was stunned—he’d never had anyone speak angrily to him during confession before, and he’d certainly never had someone criticize him before about the severity of his dispensed penance. “How dare you! Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“I
know
who I’m talking to, which is the problem, you stupid jerk. Who could take you serious?”

“Paulie? Paulie
Scaffa,
oh, Christ, I didn’t recognize your voice! That’s
your
old man? Tell him to quit reading
Spicy Detective.
”

“You tell him. But from now on out it’s two Hail Marys, two Our Fathers, and a good Act of Contrition. I want a
civilized
penance from here on out, Carl, ’cause if I find out different . . .”

“Okay, okay. Maybe I was out of line. Maybe I was fooling around, busting the old man’s chops. But I didn’t know it was
your
dad, Paulie.”

“Let’s just forget it.”

“In fact, why don’t you send him back in here right now, I’ll give him a reduced sentence.”

Paulie chuckled. “Nah, that’s all right. Starting next week. So, you work this shift every Sunday?”

“Every Sunday.”

“Then maybe I’ll talk to you again.”

“You always come with the old man?”

“Yeah, he don’t want to let it go more than a week at his age. You know.”

“Sure, sure. Say, what’ve you been doing?”

“I can’t talk about it but it’s good.”

“You ever see any of the guys from the neighborhood?”

“Nah.”

“Ronnie Squitieri joined the Carmelite order.”

“I heard that. You guys. The Depression ain’t gonna last forever and when it’s over you’re still gonna be priests.”

They laughed.

That was a year and a half ago and since then Paulie Scaffa and Carl Krusada have forged a genuine friendship, something they’d never had back in grammar school. They went drinking, to the ball game (the Yankees and the football Giants), even deep-sea fishing. Then Carl had to go and give the clap to a schoolgirl, the poor schmuck. And while Paulie Scaffa in no way took responsibility for Carl’s problems, he
had
felt bad when it turned out Carl picked up his dose from a chippy working a house that Lex Luthor owned and that Paulie recommended, even going so far as to give Carl a handful of brass coins exchangeable for services . . .