It's Superman! A Novel (46 page)

Since their arrival back at Lex’s apartment in the Waldorf Towers, Carl already has telephoned the Scaffa residence three separate times, each time at Lex’s curt prompting. The first time, Mr. Scaffa said only that Paulie was out. The second time, he said that Paulie had received a telephone call and
then
went out. And the third time, he said that Paulie was
still
out, that he’d gone out after receiving a telephone call, and that so far as Mr. Scaffa was concerned the worthless
stunad
should
stay
out.

He also mentioned something about Paulie trying to kill him with a jack-in-the-box, but Carl didn’t bother reporting it to Lex Luthor since he figured it was simply another instance of the old coot’s senility.

“There’s no answer at all now, sir. Mr. Scaffa usually goes straight to bed on Sundays right after Edgar Bergen.”

What is going
on?
Lex wants to know. Mrs. O’Shea wasn’t at home when he returned—and not a note. Paulie’s gone out—where?—and is unreachable.

“Mr. Luthor?”

“Leave,” he says.

“Yes, sir, but can I do anything else before I—”

“Just leave. Now! Get out!”

“Yes, sir.” Carl Krusada looks crushed. His face has turned paper-white, and he stumbles against the coffee table in his haste to obey. “What time will you need me in the morning? Sir?”

But Lex doesn’t answer, seems in fact to have blotted Carl from his vision and his consciousness.

What is going
on? Something
is.
What?

At that precise moment a grapefruit-size ball of crumpled metal smashes through the French doors, twenty-seven flights above Lexington Avenue, shattering glass and whizzing across the living room to embed itself four inches deep in the silver-papered wall behind the wet bar.

4

“—that cop?”

“Yeah! Did you
see
that guy?”

“With the nose, right? That cop with the red nose?”

“Was he a riot or what?”

“Like he was gonna have a heart attack!”

“I bet he quits the force!”

“I bet they make him! ”

“And that other one, you see him try to grab my cape?”

“He tried to grab your cape? Which one?”

“Big mustache?”

“He tried to grab your
cape
? Man, it’s lucky he didn’t end up hitching a ride!”

Clark rubs a hand around his jaw. “I was afraid I’d drop you.”

“You were?”

“I wasn’t sure I had a good grip. It all happened so fast.”

“You had a
great
grip.
I
was afraid I’d drop the stupid camera.”

They are on the flat tar-papered roof of their tenement on St. Mark’s Place, Willi sitting on the parapet smoking while Clark pulls a pair of his trousers, a shirt, and black socks off a clothesline.

Stepping into his trousers, Clark tugs them over his ruined tights. He retrieves his eyeglasses from the little pocket he sewed into his cape and then stuffs in the tail. “It feels lumpy. Does it
look
lumpy?” He turns around so Willi can give his opinion.

“It looks all right. Makes your rear end look kind of big . . .”

“How
big?”

“Relax. It looks fine.”

Clark goes and sits next to Willi while he puts on his socks. “Can I borrow your shoes? And your belt?”

Willi makes a face. But okay: belt and shoes. Then he says, “Can I ask you something?”

“Hmmm?”

“Who are you right now?”

“What?”

“Who are you supposed to be right now? Clark or Superman?”

“I’m not
supposed
to be anybody, it’s all just—”

“Because whether you know it or not you’re still talking in that deep voice.”

“I am?”

“You just changed it. But yeah, you were.”

Clark wrinkles his forehead. “I guess I should watch that.” He stands up. “So where
is
this place?”

Willi points downtown and to the west. “You can’t miss it—it’s got a big globe on the roof.” He stoops and picks up his camera from the rooftop, ejects a used flashbulb, and lobs it casually over his shoulder. They hear it burst down in the courtyard. Then Willi snaps the film hatch shut. “I kind of thought we’d get a bigger reaction from the guy.”

“What guy?”

“ ‘What guy?’ Luthor!”

“Oh. Yeah. Me too. Think we did a lot of damage? How much you think it’ll cost to replace those doors?”

Willi drops the roll of exposed film into Clark’s palm. “Forget about the stupid doors. And don’t scuff the shoes.”

Clark steps onto the parapet.

“And don’t let anybody see you flying around in those clothes.”

“I
won’t.
”

Clark doesn’t move.

“Are you gonna do this or not?”

“I’m a little nervous.”

“You just annihilated a
robot.
I think you can talk to the editor of the
Daily Planet.
Would you
go
already? I’m freezing to death up here. But wake me when you get back.”

5

It’s on the tip of Ben Jaeger’s tongue, whose version of “Deep Elem Blues” they’re listening to. But he just can’t . . . “The Shelton Brothers? Gene Autry on vocals?”

“Nice try, kid. But no cigar. Les Paul, recording as Rhubarb Red. Decca, 1936.”

“I’ll never have your ear, Lieutenant.”

“Sure you will, you just have to pay attention.”

Of all the places Ben has been most comfortable in his life, been most himself, Lieutenant Sandglass’s living room is right at the top. He never thought he’d be here again. But here he is. Except for the obvious absence of photographs and photostats, the accumulating contents of their Lex Luthor dossier piled on the coffee table and the sofa cushions, on any flat surface, the room doesn’t look any different than it did during all of those evenings Dick Sandglass and Ben Jaeger spent here together. Growing more excited with each piece of the story they fit into place.

The furniture is the same, there is still that crack in the window. The same rug, the radiator with the perforated cover. The record collection is still here too, hundreds of thick varnished disks in their paper sleeves, cataloged in alphabetical order.

Tieless but otherwise dressed for a wake or a funeral in his one black suit, Dick Sandglass sings along with the recording: “Oh sweet mama, your daddy’s got the Deep Elem Blues . . .”

Ben leans forward. “Lieutenant? There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Can it wait for a little while?”

“Sure, that’s fine.”

Sandglass smiles. “When you go down to Deep Elem,” he and Les Paul sing, “put your money in your socks, them Deep Elem monsters, they will throw you on the rocks.”

Monsters? Ben always thought the lyric said
women,
them Deep Elem
women,
they will throw you on the rocks.

But there you go. It just goes to show how little he pays attention. He doesn’t pay enough attention to
anything.
That’s his problem, his weakness. One of them.

During the next refrain Spider Sandglass comes in from the hall. He barely acknowledges Ben. “Do you need the car?” Spider asks his father. “I’d like to take it out for a spin.”

Ben notices that a fine trickle of sand or powder is spilling from the bottom of Spider’s trouser legs. He tracks the stuff across the floor.

“Actually, I do need it tonight,” says Dick Sandglass. “Ben will be leaving in a short while and I have to run him back.” He smiles at his son. “Do you want to take a ride with us?”

“No, that’s okay.”

When Spider turns and goes back out, Ben leans to the side in his chair, mesmerized by the steady sifting of that fine white powder drizzling out behind him.

Sandglass catches Ben looking. “He can’t help it, that boy was
born
messy.” They both laugh. “But in the end that hardly matters. It
doesn’t
matter. He’s a good boy, a good son. I was so proud of him. You would’ve been too, Benny.” Sandglass pushes himself out of his easy chair and lifts the armature off the recording, sets it carefully on its prong. “Come on, I’ll give you a lift back.”

“If you don’t mind I’d like to stay a while longer.”

“Sorry, kid. Time to go.”

“But we still haven’t talked.”

“So we’ll talk in the car.”

Dick Sandglass’s Dodge coupe never used to have a radio in the dashboard but now it does, a good one too, with a brilliant yellow dial light and excellent sound.

By a real coincidence the song playing as they drive away from the Bowery and through the half-deserted streets of the old Fourth Ward is another version of “Deep Elem Blues.”

Sandglass removes his right hand from the steering wheel to poke Ben in the shoulder with a finger.

“The Blue Ridge Ramblers?”

“I’ll give it to you this time, but it’s the Blue Ridge Ramblers recording as the
Prairie
Ramblers.”

“You don’t have to give it to me. I didn’t get it right, I messed up.”

Ben notices a small deckle-edged photograph clipped to the driver’s sun visor. Leaning forward, he examines it: a heavyset pretty woman in a chiffon dress standing on a bandstand singing at a microphone, lost in bliss. “Who’s that, Lieutenant?”

He grins. “None of your beeswax.”

They are motoring through the Jewish District now, on Orchard crossing Delancey, crossing Rivington, crossing Stanton, then crossing East Houston and taking First Avenue north past the numbered streets.

“You wanted to tell me something,” says Dick Sandglass. “This is probably the time.”

“I just wanted to say how sorry I am. You picked a lousy protégé.”

“You think?”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. Excuse me, Benny, but you don’t. You did the best you could. So did I. But sometimes . . .” He shrugs. “We’re only people.”

“I let you down, Lieutenant.”

“Cut it out.”

While they’re stopped at a red light, Ben glances through his side window and notices, inside a Nash-Lafayette stopped parallel to the Dodge, a stocky dark-haired man seated behind the wheel with his face buried in his hands. His shoulders jerk up and down. He’s sobbing. In the back seat a slender, attractive white-haired woman is tapping the tip of an index finger against a small red hole in the center of her forehead. Then she runs the fingertip around and around her pinched lips, rouging them.

Ben thinks: Oh.

So this is—

The light changes to green and Dick Sandglass drives on, but the Nash-Lafayette stays where it was. Twisting around in his seat, Ben looks through the rear window: the traffic light behind them has turned quickly back to red.

“We’re all people, Benny, and our fundamental nature is to screw up things like you wouldn’t believe. Most of the time. But would you want it any different?”

“Are you kidding? Sure I would!”

“No, you wouldn’t. Trust me.”

“I only wanted to say I’m sorry and I hope you forgive me. We worked so long to bring down that—”

“Okay! I heard you say you’re sorry, and if you think you need my forgiveness, you got it. All right?”

Ben nods.

“So that’s finished. And so far as that bald-headed monster is concerned, kiddo, we did our part, we did our best.”

“But it wasn’t enough.”

“Cry sake,
we did our part.
And other people did theirs, whether they know it or not. Nobody does it all by himself, Ben. Do your little part and hope for the best. That’s our motto.”

“Whose motto?”

“People’s, Benny. Human beings. And here’s where you get out.”

They’ve pulled curbside and the car idles now in front of one of the newer buildings of Bellevue Hospital. The sign chiseled above the entrance reads:
THE PATHOLOGICAL BUILDING.

It’s the city morgue.

Ben turns his head and finds Sandglass grinning. “Actually,
you
go in up there,” he says pointing through the windshield at the main entrance to the hospital complex.

“What, you couldn’t’ve parked closer?”

“Scared you.”

“Did not.”

“Did too,” says Sandglass.

In the space of a single breath Ben’s expression changes from delight (he can’t
believe
the lieutenant just teased him, he
never
did that before) to deep melancholy. “Lieutenant. I hope you know just how much I—”

“No schmaltz, kid. Just get out of here and do the best you can.”

They shake hands and Ben starts to open his door.

“Oh. Kid. Wait up.”

Sandglass stretches out his right arm and Ben Jaeger moves in and lets himself be hugged. But then he winces. And realizes that he’s dressed now in a hospital gown. Peering down its open neck, he discovers surgical dressings on his chest crisscrossed with adhesive tape. “See you, Lieutenant.”

“Not for a while, kid.”

When the Dodge turns down Thirtieth Street and disappears, Ben walks barefooted to the main hospital entrance and goes inside. Rides the elevator to the sixth floor, Intensive Care. As if directed by a homing device, he negotiates the pea-soup-green hallways and side corridors, weaving around orderlies and nurses, physicians and suited administrators who pay him no attention. At last he comes to the Post-Op ward. Checking a clipboard on the counter at the head nurse’s station, he learns that his room is 6115.

But as he turns the last corner, Ben shudders and comes to an abrupt stop.

Straight ahead stands Lois Lane, her stockings full of holes, both shoes missing their heels, her coat encrusted with dried blood.

She is speaking animatedly to a blond nurse who looks vaguely familiar and is built like Mae West.

Ben’s heart speeds up, then spasms, then sinks.

He is tired suddenly. Exhausted.

Slipping past Lois and the nurse, Ben enters his room, slides under the sheets. A midget radio on the night table is turned on with the volume low.

The song playing is “Deep Elem Blues.”

Les Paul recording as Rhubarb Red, Ben says to himself. Decca, 1936.

Perry White. Skinny returns. The Daily Planet.
Lovesick. Conversation on the nut bench.
A scoop at last. Superman and Lex Luthor.
●

1

Less than a minute after she is dropped off at Bellevue Hospital, Lois tosses a nickel into one of the pay telephones, pulls closed the bifold door, and rids her mind of everything except first graf, second graf, third graf.