It's Superman! A Novel (7 page)

So far, all that Willi can make out are trousered legs. Blue serge. Blue denim. But
some
body—presumably “sir”—is wearing a tuxedo.

“Oh, Christ,” says the tuxedoed man.

“I told you it was pretty bad.” Blue Denim speaking.

“And you got here when?”

“Nine, little bit after.”

“Where’s Leon?”

“Upstairs, sir. They cut his throat.”

“Go see if they took the records, Paulie.”

“Sticky checked when he got here the first time, boss. They’re all gone.”

So Blue Serge is Paulie, Blue Denim is Sticky.

But what about the “boss”? Who is “sir”? Willi is certain he’s heard the man’s voice before. There’s something about it. Something . . . “tony”? That, yeah, but not
exactly,
not Ivy
League
tony; it’s not in the vowels or the sinuses, it’s just . . . there’s something
practiced
about it, and confident, like a radio voice you’d listen to if it told you to run out and buy Silvercup bread. Gingerly, Willi lifts the hem of the sheet, hoping to see a little better. No dice.

“I want all these men removed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And disposed of. And I don’t mean the river. Jersey. Or the Adirondacks.”

“Sure, boss, no problem. But what about Leon?”

“Leave him. They’ll call it a robbery.”

“But they didn’t take any money, sir.”

“Then empty the register, Stick.”

“And where do you want all this
stuff
?”

“Take it up to Inwood. But, Paulie, before you go sailing in there, check first. Make sure nobody’s waiting for you.”

“I’ll take along five, six guys.”

“Excellent. Very excellent, indeed,” says the man in the tuxedo, and
boom,
Willi suddenly knows who it is standing not ten feet away and giving silky-voiced orders to remove five shot-dead bodies and a ton of illegal gambling equipment. And if he doesn’t manage somehow to click a picture of him, he might just as well tear up all of those Willi the Great business cards and toss ’em off the Chrysler Building!

The trick of, course, will be to take the damn picture and live long enough to develop it.

3

“Your father wants to know if you’re all right.”

“I’m fine, Mother. Now tell him to go away.”

“In case you forgot, Lois, he lives here.”

“Doesn’t he need to brush his teeth or something?”

“Hold on.”

While Lois waits, she empties her ashtray into the wastepaper basket and lights another Lucky.

“Turtle? He’s putting out the trash. What’s going on?”

Turtle?
All of a sudden Lois feels twelve again, the last thing she needs now. “Mom? How come men are such goofs?”

“For the love of mike! This is a long-distance phone call.”

“How come?”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No!”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you. How do
I
know about men?”

“I hate them.”

“Your father’s a man.”

“Well, he’s all right.”

“ ‘Goof,’ ” says Mrs. Lane. “I’m not sure I’m even clear what a goof
is.”

“I’d use a stronger term, but you’re my mother.”

“Thank you.”

“Name me one that’s not a sneaky, selfish, sponging liar. And Daddy doesn’t count.”

“Douglas MacArthur.”

“Douglas MacArthur.”

“You
asked.”

“No, I mean—”

“Will Rogers. Bing Crosby. Fred Astaire.” Then she pauses for a moment and says, “F.D.R.”

“Why are you whispering?”

“Because your father just came back, and you know how he feels about
him.
Oh Lois, honey, there are
millions
of nice men.”

“I haven’t met any.”

“Was there anything else, dear? Because your father would like to close up down here and go to bed.”

On her end of the wire, Lois sobs out, but then says, “No, nothing else.”

“Did you love him?”

“Who?”

“The sneaky, selfish, sponging liar that broke your heart tonight.”

“My heart is
not
broken, Mother. Where would you get
that
idea?”

“Then good night, Lois.”

“Night, Mom.”

“Lois?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Dick Powell. Dick Powell seems like a genuinely nice man. From what I’ve read.”

“Okay.”

“And what about your mayor? The little fat man? You like
him,
don’t you? And what about that other one, the mayor’s friend? You sent us that wonderful story about him, that you wrote for your class.”

“Oh, you mean—?”

“The way you described
him,
he sounded like the cat’s whiskers.”

“I guess. But I’m not really talking about—”

“So we’ve established that there are many fine and good men in this world, and now we can both go to sleep with grateful hearts.”

“Did you
really
like that story, Mother?”

“Of course.”

“I did that one back in October. I’m writing much better now.”

“Well, it was wonderful, and
you’re
wonderful, and men—
most
of them—are perfectly wonderful too. And now, my darling Turtle, sweet dreams.”

After Lois puts the telephone receiver back on its hook, she walks the floor trying to gauge whether her mood has been lifted or whether she’s still wallowing in the Men All Stink Blues. She considers fixing a cocktail, but that’s not what she wants. What she wants is for Willi Berg to call her now and say that he’s sorry, horribly, wretchedly,
incalculably
sorry. And beg forgiveness.

Yes, but what she also wants, and quite suddenly, is to go dig out that news story she did for her Local Political Reporting class. She wrote it during her first semester, just before a special election to the Board of Aldermen was called in the wake of the previous office-holder’s inexplicable suicide. It wasn’t the
best
thing she ever wrote, but as she recalls it now it was pretty decent work.

She still has it, of course. She keeps everything, has always kept everything, including short stories, poems, themes, and diaries going back as far as the first grade, and clippings and tear sheets from all of her school newspapers, country day through college.

Her mother liked that story, did she?
That
silly old thing?

Without any trouble she finds the typescript in a folder on a shelf in the bedroom closet—she received an “A” for the assignment, naturally—and sits on her bed reading it through. As she does, Lois recalls the terror she felt “covering the story” that morning. Naturally, it wasn’t an exclusive—after all, she was a mere journalism student. She arrived at the Commodore Hotel with Willi Berg, who blithely waved his press card, gripped her by an elbow, and shunted her into one of the ballrooms. He left her then to find a good spot for picture-taking. The place was crowded, but somehow Lois managed to nab a seat in front.

When the candidate appeared finally for his press conference, she was electrified to see that La Guardia himself had come along to lend support.

The mayor at her first press conference!

Could it get much better than that?

Yes. Yes, it could. Because practically the same moment she summoned the nerve to raise a hand, the candidate—“tall and athletic-looking,” she would later write, “with a full head of wavy red hair”—pointed to her from behind his podium. “Yes, ma’am?”

Praying her face didn’t look half as drained as it felt, and speaking in a firm, clear voice, the way Professor Gurney had taught her, she asked, “How would you rate your chances for election, sir?”

Lois smiles now, remembering.

How would you rate your chances for election, sir?

And of course she also remembers the candidate’s single impudent wink and the beguiling way he looked at her, as if she were the only other person in the room.

“My chances?” said Lex Luthor. “Excellent. Very excellent, indeed.”

An incriminating photograph is sought.
Smoking condemned. The sins of the father and
the names of the son. The humming alderman.
●

1

Over the last few months, Lex Luthor has had his picture taken more times, far more times, than in all of his previous life. But while surely that’s a
good
thing, since it means his political career is flourishing, still Lex feels cold dread whenever someone points a camera at him. For the split second he’s blinded by the flash light he has to quash an imperative instinct to cut and run. No matter who he is now, and he has worked hard to create himself, to build formidable identities both public and secret, at base he remains his father’s son, and his father killed a man, then lived the rest of his miserable existence as a fugitive in constant fear of being recognized, seized, and punished.

Once, when the family—calling itself the Littles that year—was living in Ashland, Virginia, and Lex was eleven, a photographer snapped a picture of him parading on stilts at the town’s July Fourth picnic. Next morning, it appeared on the front page of the daily newspaper, and there for all to see was Lex’s father cringing in the background, one hand flung up to conceal his face. God, that look of sheer terror. Lex never forgot it. Or forgave it, either.

Now, decades later and just minutes after Willi Berg leapt out of nowhere and clicked a jeopardizing picture of
him,
of Alderman Lex Luthor standing in a bookie joint with two known criminals and five murdered men, he wonders if his face looked as stricken as his father’s had on that Independence Day. Jesus Christ, he
hopes
not.

But he will never find out—will he?—since that film is never going to be developed.
Is it?

“No, boss. We’ll find him.”

“Yes, Paulie, we will.”

“I don’t know
how
he got in—”

“But we certainly know how he got
out,
don’t we?”

“I thought Stick closed the door.”

“Hey!
You
came in last, you shoulda closed it.”

“Shut up, the both of you. And take a left here, Paulie. At Thirty-eighth.”

“But how do you figure he’d go east, boss? He’s some kind of news-hawk, right? So the closest paper’d be the
Times.
Or the
HT.
And they’re a couple blocks up on—”

“He’s a
tabloid
rat, Paulie. He’ll head for the
Mirror
or the
Daily News.
East.”

“But why do you think he took Thirty-eighth?”

“Because Thirty-seventh is closest, and he’d
expect
us to think he took it.”

“How do you know he’s on foot?”

“I don’t. I’m hoping. And for your sake, Paulie, you’d better hope I’m
right.
” His eyes lock on the driver’s profile and don’t blink.

“I
thought
I closed it, boss. It musta stuck.”

“Just drive. And Stick? When we spot him?”

“I’m out in a flash, sir, you bet. And I’ll get you that camera, no problem.”

“I expect you to get more than just the camera.”

“Yes, sir. Goes without saying. That stinkin’ little hebe is history.”

“Stick, please. I don’t want to hear that kind of name calling.”

Then: “Paulie, speed up a little, I think I see him!” says Lex, thinking if that picture ever
were
developed, which it
won’t
be, he might look surprised, possibly shocked, but not terrified, not craven. Not
caught.
Not him. Never.

He’s not his father.

“Stick! Now! Go, go!”

2

Not again. Lois feels as though she’s wasted half the evening on the telephone—who’s calling her
now,
dammit?

(Be Willi.)

“Oh, it’s you,” she says. “Flat leaver.”

“Cut it out, Lo, and lis—”

“You really left me in the lurch, you know it? Moving in with your hotshot boyfriend, thank you so very much.”

“Lois, Willi’s been shot. They just brought him in.”

“What are you talking about,
in
? In where? What are you saying?”

“I’m
saying,
Lois, that somebody shot Willi, and they just brought him into Roosevelt. I’ll meet you down in Emergency. ”

“Skinny! That’s not funny!
Skinny!”

3

Seated in the rear of a gray Lincoln town car parked with the motor running on West Thirty-seventh Street, Lex Luthor idly jiggles a roll of twelve-exposure Kodak film in his left palm while observing a large-bellied cop at the Seventh Avenue corner smoking a cigarette.

Lex
hates
smoking, detests the
habit.
First thing, soon as he’s the mayor? It becomes a felony. Smoking becomes a Class A felony—you get caught with those things, expect to do some hard time. Or maybe he’ll have to wait till he’s governor. Or president. Or king. But you smokers, all you nicotine fiends? Your day is coming. Gum chewers, too.

Hooking three fingers around the edge of the film container, he pulls, first bending, then cracking the metal. He tears out the sprocketed acetate. Then he lights it with a match and tosses it through the open curbside window, watches it burn in the gutter. A tune starts playing in his mind and Lex hums it. Just a month ago, a columnist at the
Mirror
stuck in a jokey little item about Alderman Luthor’s “endearing” habit of humming half-aloud during soporific budget meetings—“When I Grow Too Old to Dream” was the tune the columnist specifically mentioned. That, and “Moonglow.”

Now he’s humming “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”

A panel truck with its headlights off noses slowly from the alley just ahead but stops before it rolls into Thirty-seventh Street. That would be all the punchboards, the slot and pinball machines. The driver sets the brake.

Paulie gets out of the cab’s passenger door smoking a cigarette. He walks over to the big Lincoln and smiles down at the still-burning tangle of film.

“All set, boss. The Ince brothers are in the back with the stuff, and that’s Frank Wrobble at the wheel.”

“All right,” says Lex, “here’s what you do. Tell Frank to go on up to Inwood without you—and remind him what I said about checking before just walking in there.”

“I’ll do that, boss.”