Wonder Guy (16 page)

Greg, still standing, uneasy in the man’s presence, focused hard on the outer wall of the office, and sure enough, the shadowy form of the neighboring Government Center building emerged, like a giant, elongated stone toaster.

“Yep.”

“Hmm. What do you think of taking a look through the walls of suspect meth houses to verify whether there’s drug dealing in progress?”

“I wouldn’t be comfortable with that unless you had a search warrant, and if you did, you wouldn’t need me.”

The police chief grunted, eased back in his padded chair. “Thought you’d say something like that.”

The representatives from the precincts arrived, and Levinson turned to them.

“Wonder Guy, I’d like you to meet Sergeant Rognby, Precinct 5 and Detective Sergeant Diaz, Precinct 3. Gentlemen, meet Wonder Guy.”

Greg nodded to the two men, taking courage from the clinging fabric of the mask concealing his features. “Hello.”

“We’ll be treating Mr. Wonder Guy here as a special case. Think of him as a cross between an informant and someone in witness protection. We protect his identity and he helps us out where he can.” The chief leaned across his desk, extending his hand to Greg. “It’s been good to meet you.”

“Likewise.” They shook, Greg careful not to exert any pressure at all. Wonder Guy’s strength took some getting used to, and crushing the chief’s hand would get things off to a bad start.

Before turning back to the papers on his desk, Levinson addressed Rognby and Diaz. “Gentlemen, take his statements and send him back out where he can do some good.”

Greg followed the two detectives from the chief’s office to the elevators. The secretary, a woman wearing a conservatively styled dark suit dress and severely cut gray hair, stared as he passed. Greg gave her a smile and nod.

“So.” Diaz, tall and dark, in an impeccable suit, looking like a younger Ricardo Montalban, turned to him when the elevator doors had closed behind them. “You know that other guy, the one in red, who ran across the lake the other day?”

“Oh yeah. That was me too.”

“How many costumes you got?” Rognby, tall, blond, and built like a linebacker, tossed the question straight and hard as a football.

“Do you wear the same suit every day?” Greg flung one back at him.

“No,” Rognby admitted. “But I’m showing my face so people know who I am.”

“Good point,” Greg said.

“Makes me wonder.” Diaz spoke as they reached a marble-tiled hallway on the basement level and conducted Greg to an interview room. “Did Batman, Superman and Spiderman have a whole set of identical costumes so they weren’t wearing the same one every day?”

“Think of the laundry they’d have to do every night if they only had the one costume,” Rognby said, wincing.

“Superman could walk through fire, completely sterilizing his costume anytime he wanted,” Greg mused aloud. “Bruce Wayne was a millionaire with the money to afford a lot of backup costumes. Poor Peter Parker’d have had a lot of laundry, though.”

* * * *

Later, his witness statements complete, Greg couldn’t fly directly out of City Hall from the basement without destroying parts of the building and surrounding streets and sidewalk. Instead, he walked to the Government Center through the wide, well-lit, tiled tunnel under Fourth Street.

Everyone around him wore either business dress or everyday jeans and slacks. Well, some Somali immigrants wore long robes and head coverings, and the policemen wore uniforms, but all the stares at his costumed form made him self-conscious. Weren’t business suits, uniforms, robes, jeans and everything else some kind of costume too? Why should he feel weird? His costume made at least as much sense as the guy wearing his leather jacket on such a warm spring day.

What good did it do him being a superhero if he only felt like more of an oddball than ever? Maybe that was his real problem. One thing to be said for Gloria’s fiancé, Pete fit in. No one would stare at Pete while he did nothing stranger than walk between City Hall and the Government Center.

Greg paused at the glass wall shielding the sheets of water falling from the reflecting pool in the Government Center Plaza above. The fountain seemed as wonderful as any of the magical events he’d encountered these past few days. Water flowed like skeins of glass and silver over the stone lip above, catching the sunshine as it fell into the basin a level below the plaza. Tempting, to break through the glass, take flight up and out, through the pool’s well and into the open air. But witnesses surrounded him and, most importantly, he had no desire to face Chief Levinson if he damaged public property.

Greg took the escalator up to ground level and exited the building before giving in to the urge to take flight. He made a running leap to the high blue yonder and people who’d been only staring before gasped and cried out in astonishment below him. He twisted in midair to wave to the crowd of school children clustered around the circular reflecting pool.

He positioned himself above the center of the pool, where he’d earlier seen water flowing to the well from below. He understood why people threw coins into a fountain. Especially now. In a world where fairy godmothers wielded magical powers, why not make wishes? He might not know what underpinnings of quantum connectivity or super strings, what sub-atomic manipulations made such magic real, but he knew more to be possible in the world than he’d allowed for in any of his previous philosophies.

He flew high above the pool before he dropped as if falling, to cries of alarm, diving to the bottom of the well. Entering the well surrounded him in the water’s magic of silver and song. There, in the enlivening mists, Greg caught himself and leapt high again, careful not to damage the tiled flooring on liftoff. He arrowed up and out, meeting the cheers of children.

What a rush! Even as the air burned his bare jaw with acceleration, Greg’s heart lifted. Maybe drawing stares could be some fun after all. Greg turned and waved again before heading home.

* * * *

Zzzz. The buzz in his ear grew shrill, turning to a high-pitched squeal. Greg slapped his head, and then shook off the effects of the mighty blow.

“Agh! What the–what was that?” A feedback signal?

The squeal sounded again like a nail through his ear. Greg banked to a hasty landing on the flat rooftop of a red brick apartment building in South Minneapolis.

“Serafina,” he called.

“Yes, dear?” The tidy, white-haired figure stood beside him. “I’m sorry about that. There seems to be some interference with our signal. I don’t know much regarding these technologies with the metal bits and electricity. I plugged one of those radio devices into the costume.”

She circled Greg as she spoke, peering closely at the costume. She seemed almost to sniff at it.

“Ah, yes. It seems someone gave you a gift.” She reached up, plucked at his shoulder and handed him what looked like a pin, for very broad definitions of pin. It had a bulging over-large head trailing a length of long fine wire.

He’d watched enough TV to know a tracking device when he saw one. Detective Diaz had clapped him there on the shoulder as they’d parted earlier.

“Someone wants to know where Wonder Guy goes, where I live.” So much for establishing trust with the police department. He sighed, envying Batman’s relationship with Commissioner Gordon.

Serafina tsked. “Well, I’m afraid we must disappoint them.”

Greg held up the tiny device before his eyes and turned on the heat vision. Without ever having tried to apply it before, he knew how to activate it. He turned the heat of his anger on the object before his eyes. Heat shimmered around the tiny device until the filament slumped into the head, and the head collapse into a shiny bead of metal. He flicked the bead to the gravel underfoot.

Serafina smiled a prim smile. “I attempted to call you just now in order to draw your attention to a pair of young men who are presently breaking into cars in the parking ramps at the large market complex to the south of us.”

“The Mall of America?”

“Yes, dear. Once there you can follow the sound of breaking glass.”

Chapter 10

Gloria made it home in half the usual time. Amazing what a difference driving home at noon made, compared to rush hour. When she approached it, she balked at going into her own house. She got enough of Dad during her regular schedule. She couldn’t deal with him now, not with her world reeling and strange around her. She headed straight for Aggie’s, opened the back screen door, and stopped short, finding the inner door closed and unaccountably locked. It took a moment to digest the fact of this barrier between her and her goal.

In the shade of the huge maple dominating the yard, she stood with the slight spring breeze blowing around her, carrying the scent of freshly mown grass. Had she come to the wrong door of the wrong house? No, her own house stood right next door, like always. She registered the note taped to the window in Aggie’s kitchen door.

Out for coffee, back before dinner. Don’t worry. - Aggie.

What a day for disruptions of the sacred order of the universe. Once, long ago, she’d liked surprises. Today’s events reminded her exactly why that had changed. Gloria sat down on the top step of the cement stoop, heedless of her nice linen skirt. She wanted to talk to Aggie, but Aggie had gone. She’d counted on talking to Aggie, needed to talk to someone. Gloria gulped in a deep breath. She would not cry. Despite the evident lush life of familiar lawns and houses and trees, the world had become an empty desert.

A couple more deep breaths steadied her. She dug in her bag, found her cell phone and punched Pete’s work number. He didn’t like her calling him there, but under the circumstances, there ought to be an exception. Right?

“Hello? This is Pete in accounts receivable.”

“Pete. It’s me, Gloria.” Her voice sounded shaky to her own ears.

“What is it?” He spoke in a hushed tone. “You know I’m not supposed to take personal calls here.”

“I know. Just. I need you. My friend at work, Jo? She’s gone. Dead. She was killed last night. Oh, Pete.” She gulped, struggling past the constriction of her throat, dragging in the air like hauling up an anchor.

“Hey, I’m sorry, sweetheart. That’s terrible. I want to be there for you, but I can’t talk right now. What say we get together as soon as I’m off work?”

Gloria spoke past the rushing in her ears, the sinking of her heart. “Sure. I guess.”

“That’s my girl. We’ll talk then. I’ll take you out. Later.” He cut the connection.

Gloria lowered her head to her knees. The rushing in her ears resolved into the whoosh of the breeze through the leaves above her. Birds chirped and called, a car door slammed somewhere down the block. More distantly, a lawnmower growled. It all seemed part of some other world. Here she trembled alone in the darkness behind her eyes, where the flood came sweeping past all restraints.

“Hey, Glo-worm, what’s wrong?”

Gloria started upright, wiping at her eyes.

“Greg. What are you doing home in the middle of the day?” She managed to speak, but her voice sounded wrong: weak, false.

“I thought I’d make myself a sandwich for lunch–what about you? Don’t you have work today?”

* * * *

Greg stood with a hand on the rail of Aggie’s ramp beside the back steps. Something had to be very wrong. Gloria hadn’t snapped at him when he called her ‘Glo-worm,’ the nickname he’d come up with when he was ten, for the sole purpose of getting her goat. Over the years, it had produced reactions from shrieks when she was ten, to growls, to a roll of her eyes in her teens, to her current dismissive snort. But always something.

He’d used it now unthinkingly, from fond habit. With her head bowed across her knees, she might have been only resting, but when she looked up the bleakness in her eyes struck him like a fist to his chest. No sign of the usual gamut from sunshine to storms that made her face a continual fascination to him, but signs of her tears wrenched his gut.

“Aggie’s gone,” she said, tilting her head toward the door behind her.

He read the note taped to the glass. She wouldn’t cry over that, would she?

“You get off work early?” He took a seat beside her on the stoop. “Is it some kind of holiday?” He could never remember the holidays. He’d gone to campus more than once to find buildings locked and closed. “Did you want to get into the house to work on your project?”