It's Superman! A Novel (41 page)

Willi sets his camera down to free it.

“Don’t rip the fabric.”

“I’m not gonna rip the fabric. Jeez.”

When the cape is free they take off, prank-giddy and laughing shrilly as twelve-year-olds.

Clark can’t bring himself to tell Willi that he left a twenty-dollar bill back on the ledge of the cash register.

He hopes twenty dollars covers it.

8

The moment Caesar Colluzo, carrying a battered-looking satchel, walks into the small office that Lex maintains on the fifty-second floor of the Chrysler Building, his eyes dart to the file folder on the desk blotter. His eyebrows inch up but otherwise his facial expression remains the same as always: blandly furious.

“You seem a little surprised, Caesar,” says Lex. “Didn’t I promise you I’d have it?”

“You’ll excuse me, sir, if I don’t trust you.”

“No. No, I don’t believe I will excuse you. I’m a man of my word. You’ve given me what I asked you to deliver—and now I’m delivering you this.” He taps the folder and then opens the cover. Inside are slightly more than a dozen photographic prints, facedown as a courtesy. There is also a strip of negatives. As well as a banker’s check made out to Caesar Colluzo in the amount of five hundred thousand dollars. “I’ll be sorry to see you go, Caesar, but a deal is a deal. The machines”—as another courtesy he doesn’t refer to them as Lexbots—“are magnificent.”

“Of course they are.” Since he came into the office and stopped, Colluzo has not moved one step closer to the desk.

“Shall we have a drink? I’d like to propose a toast.”

“No, thank you.”

Lex sits back in his chair, pressing his palms together, steepling his fingers. “You’re more than welcome to stay on.”

“I think not.”

“I thought not, too,” says Lex. He shrugs. “Well then. Shall we make the exchange and bid each other farewell?” He gets up and comes around from behind the desk. “Everything is in there?” he says, pointing to the satchel.

“Everything.”

“And naturally the schematics, et cetera, are all authentic?”

“Would you know if they weren’t?”

“You’d be surprised, Caesar. So why don’t you just wipe that little sneer off your face?” He reaches behind him and without looking picks up the folder. Holds it out.

With a dubious scowl Colluzo walks up and takes it. He hesitates for a second before passing off the school-bag.

“What are your plans now, Caesar, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I
do
mind. And my plans are no business of yours.”

“Not entirely true. I’ll remind you of those nondisclosure forms you signed. They’re quite binding.”

Colluzo shrugs. “Good night, Mr. Luthor. And goodbye.”

“Five hundred thousand dollars is no paltry sum.”

“Compared to what you’ll earn from my machines?”

“This has never been about earnings, my friend.”

“Oh no? Then what
has
it been about?”

Lex’s eyes flash briefly and he smiles. For a moment he thinks he just might take Caesar Colluzo into his confidence. Why not? At this stage, why not? But finally: no. Much better to keep his plans to himself.

By summer, by Lex’s lowball estimation, there will be at least ten million Lexbots in circulation worldwide, each one, thanks to the little black cube, under his absolute command. Recording conversations, filming activities in the boardroom, the bedroom, the Situation Room, the nursery, memorizing alternate ledgers, secret codes, secret formulas, secret kisses, secret deals. The labels of prescription-drug bottles, the combinations to wall safes.

Oh yes, and the list of things just goes on.

And by this time next year a hundred forty million Lexbots! Playing music, playing cards, doing dishes, doing homework, doing the taxes, driving limousines and the family Ford. Keeping people company. Lighting their cigarettes and (although it would not, of course, be suggested in the Owner’s Manual) probably stimulating their genitals.

And they said
television
was going to be the “next essential thing”!

Lex could have Hitler strangled in his sleep. Or Albert Einstein. Or Cordell Hull. Blackmail everyone from bootblacks to prime ministers, from Bing Crosby to the Pope. Loot the Crown Jewels, bankrupt Warner Bros., sink the
Normandie.

And in a couple of years—a Lexbot for every ten people on earth.

That’s when he could
really
pull out the stops.

Kidnap a thousand babies,
ten
thousand, in one fell swoop.

Assassinate every male over the age of—what? Eighteen? Twenty-one? Thirty-five?

Or just let the robots run amok:
all together now, one, two . . .

He says now to Caesar Colluzo, “I think we’re done.”

They leave together through a dark reception area and then step out into the empty corridor. The elevator is to the left, about twenty feet away.

They walk there in silence.

“By the way, Caesar, that appointment you made for next Thursday at Westinghouse?” Lex presses the elevator button. “It’s been canceled.”

Colluzo’s mouth tightens. His tongue appears, disappears. “How did you—”

“Oh, please. No more robot building for you, I’m afraid.”

The elevator doors open.

There is no car behind them, just cables.

But Caesar Colluzo doesn’t notice that—too busy glaring at Lex Luthor. Who grins all of a sudden, reaching out with his left hand to snatch the file folder. With the flat of his right hand he shoves Colluzo in the chest, as hard as he can.

Carl Krusada appears from behind the fire door and joins Lex at the lip of the elevator. Together they look down.

Finally the doors close.

“Good work, Carl. Did it give you any trouble?”

“Not really, sir, no.”

“Excellent,” says Lex. “Very excellent.”

Lois & Ben & Willi & Clark. “Herman says hello.”
Mrs. O vs. Mrs. S. Panic in the street.
●

1

In Lois Lane’s apartment, Ben Jaeger is stretched out on the sofa, haphazardly flipping through a back issue of
Life
with hunting spaniels pictured on the cover. “Lo, what’re you doing? Feel like getting something to eat? Lois?”

No answer.

He kicks off his shoes, crosses his ankles.

Jumps up and goes to the window.

Then he pivots around and marches straight to the radio, snaps it on. Turns it off.

Starts to pour a drink but changes his mind.

Goes back to the window. Back to the sofa.

He jumps up again and just stands there.

Ben figures he’s going crazy. If he doesn’t think of something pretty soon to salvage his reputation, his job, and—come on, pal, admit it—his girlfriend, he is definitely headed for the nuthouse.

The telephone rings.

“Lois, you want me to answer that?”

No reply.

Ben scoops up the receiver.

When he says hello there’s a
click
and the line goes dead.

As he is turning away from the nook, an address scribbled hastily on a notepad catches Ben’s eye.

On at least two occasions he drove Lieutenant Sandglass to that same address in Turtle Bay and waited in the car while the lieutenant went inside to speak with Herman Stickowski on his deathbed. Thirty-ninth Street between Second and First.

Grabbing up the pad, Ben crosses the living room into the bedroom. “Just where the
hell
are you going tonight?”

Lois is taking her peacoat off a hanger in the closet. “To work. It’s what I do, Ben, I work. Do you mind?”

“Who gave you this address?” He holds up the telephone pad.

“I’ll thank you to leave my stuff alone.” She grabs the pad. “Now why don’t you go sulk some more, you’re so good at it. Meanwhile, I’m going to work.”

2

Heading down to the Lower East Side, they keep to Seventh Avenue until Thirty-second Street, then cut east and pick up Broadway again where it angles sharply in below Herald Square. At the corner of Twenty-ninth and Broadway, Clark draws himself up, faces east, and frowns. “You hear that?”

“What?”

Clark flips the black mask up over his forehead. “I just heard Lois.”

“What?” Willi looks up and down Broadway. “You got that skirt on the brain.” He walks on.

“She doesn’t live around here, does she?”

“As if you don’t know.”

“How would I?”

Willi turns around. “I must’ve told you.”

“Never.”

“There.” He points down Twenty-ninth Street. “She lives right over there.”

Tugging the mask back down over his eyes, Clark turns east.

“What’d she say? You heard her say something—really? What’d she say?”

“That she’s going to work.”

3

“How come?
You’re asking me how come I want to go with you to see Sticky’s wife? Damn, Lois, this could be it. What we’re
looking
for.”

Ben stands blocking the door.

“Get out of my way.”

“I can’t believe you weren’t going to tell me that Ceil called.”

“Ben, you’ve been acting like a jerk. And I don’t need some jerk messing up my interview. Okay? I know what I’m doing. I can take care of myself.”

“Oh yeah? And what if it’s a trap?”

Lois tucks her chin, shuts one eye, and beams him a withering ray with the other.
“A trap
? Who do you think you are, Doc Savage?”

4

“Who the heck is Doc Savage?” says Willi. And Clark almost tells him. But then he holds up a silencing finger to listen some more.

They are standing on the sidewalk opposite Lois Lane’s apartment building.

Clark says, “She’s going to see somebody named Ceil who lives someplace called Turtle Bay—”

“That’s just east of here, runs uptown.”

“Who’s Ceil?”

Willi shrugs.

“She’s Sticky’s wife.”

“Sticky?”
Willi grabs Clark’s arm. “Lois said
Sticky’s
wife?”

“That’s what she—
hold on!
They’re coming down.”

Willi tugs him up the steps of the apartment house behind them and into the unlighted vestibule.

Moments later Lois and Ben come out and turn left, begin walking toward Madison Avenue.

“Let’s go,” says Willi.

“Who’s Sticky?”

Willi is out the door and down the steps, turning to his right and moving fast.

“Who’s Sticky?”

“The guy that mighta shot me. Now come on if you’re coming. Shake a leg, Saucer-Man.”

5

Ever since the cathouse she’d managed was converted into a nursing and convalescent home, Ceil Stickowski has been taking Thursdays and Sundays off. Before then she worked a seven-day week, happily so. She liked her girls, she liked the clientele (for the most part), and keeping busy in a charged atmosphere was the perfect way of coping with her widow’s grief. She still missed Herman. But once the girls were shipped off, the furnishings changed, and the place filled up with codgers and lungers and paraplegics, Ceil needed regular breaks, days away from the odors of illness and age, the wails of senility. She had no trouble finding student nurses from St. Vincent’s and Bellevue to run the place twice a week.

One of those, a cute little Puerto Rican named Rosa, telephones Ceil at home this evening at precisely twenty-seven minutes past eight, as per instructions. Between then and half past,
The Chase and Sanborn Hour
breaks for commercials and the NBC-Blue station identification. It has been a quiet day, Rosa tells Ceil. Ike the Plug’s son came by and took the ninety-four-year-old former lush worker out for Sunday dinner, and Sal the Swan’s diarrhea seems finally to be under control. Rosa has done inventory, she says, and it looks to her that they can stand to order mercurochrome, shoelaces, abdominal binders, canasta decks, mahjong tiles, and at least two new toilet-seat elevators, especially since Mr. Boiardo (the former Lemon Drop Kid, scourge of Five Points) refuses to stay on his diet, no matter what anyone—

“Honey,” says Ceil. “Listen to me. Is there any way you can come back and work tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? You mean Monday?”

“Tomorrow is Monday, sweetheart, yes. Is there any way you can do that? Because I won’t be coming in, and I need someone there I can trust.”

“Well . . . I have a nutrition class in the afternoon. But I could work till then. Are you ill, Mrs. Stickowski?”

“No, no, I’m fine. I just . . . won’t be in tomorrow.”

Or ever again, Ceil has decided.

She doesn’t know what will happen once she’s told the hen from the
Daily Planet
everything that Herman told her—but whatever it is, she’s ready for it.

Lex Luthor would have killed her this afternoon if she hadn’t come up with a name for his stupid robots. She saw it in his eyes. And seeing that look she realized that somehow he’d killed her husband last summer. He’d killed Herman. Ceil just . . . knew it.

“Rosa? Thank you so much, sweetheart. I have to run.”

Ceil hangs up the phone and hears Don Ameche’s suave voice turning the microphone back over to Edgar Bergen. In the kitchen the oven timer starts to ding, which means the Toll House cookies she baked to serve to Lois Lane are done.

Transferring the cookie sheet to a trivet on the counter, Ceil listens to Charlie McCarthy rib Edgar Bergen about his garish necktie.

In his cage the African parrot watches her. All of a sudden he says, “Herman says hello, Herman says hello, Herman says hello.”

“I know he does, darling,” says Ceil.

“Herman says hello, Herman says hello!”

Herman taught Zulu to say that so that Ceil would know he was thinking of her on those long days and nights when he was away from home working for Lex Luthor.

Herman was no saint, but as a hubby the man was peerless.

She goes back into the living room and sits down to wait.

When she thinks about what she is about to do, a sharp pain just below her sternum takes Ceil’s breath away.

Maybe she won’t answer the door when Lois Lane arrives, maybe she’ll return to work tomorrow. After all, she
did
name that robot, everything is okay now, and Lex Luthor will go on paying her a generous salary: she can continue living the way she’s been, a radio and telephone in every room, subscriptions to whichever magazines she cares to look at. New hats and shoes whenever the impulse sweeps her.