The Good Fight Read online

  “OK, anyone else?” I call out. “Looking for a big guy. Hammers for hands? Shit for brains? Sound familiar?”

  My words echo in the empty bank, fortunately not staffed at such an unfashionable hour. I track my way across the worn-thin carpet ensorcelled with corporate emblazons, eyes roaming left and right as I try to discern the next line of attack.

  Nothing happens.

  “You know, this is pretty pathetic, trying to rob a bank,” I muse aloud to the room. “It’s 2002, you know? You can do better than this. I’m embarrassed for you. Truly. Do you have any idea how many guys I’ve hauled into White Six ‘cause they got some lame-ass idea about pulling gold bullion out of a bank and think just ‘cos they’ve got super-strength that no one can stop ‘em? Think again.”

  There’s a clanging noise somewhere amidships and I am still standing there in the middle of the lobby with a cute smile on my mug when a hitherto unseen back door blows inwards and a huge guy in a grey body stocking storms through, bad 80s wrestler hair-do atop a seven-foot frame with the bulk of about six silverback gorillas taped together. Lank hair frames a domino mask not unlike mine, but his sneer is nowhere near as telegenic. His right hand is shaped into a huge hammer of the gods the colour of gone-off tapioca pudding, which is a pretty good match for his suit and indeed his eyes.

  “OK,” I say. “Did you hear all that or do I have to start again?”

  “You’re a smart-ass, Zephyr,” the big guy says.

  “I see my reputation’s proceeded me. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.”

  “I’m Hammersmith,” he spits.

  “I meant the pleasure of kicking your ass,” I finish gleefully.

  As if for added punctuation, I unveil my left hand and pour a few hundred thousand amps into the villain’s chest. I barely notice as two more ant-men charge into the room from behind him (one red, the other a sickly yellow), and as Hammersmith staggers off from my attack with steam curling off him, I spend the next couple of seconds avoiding the armoured dudes’ weapons’ fire, speeding around the room and running up one wall before flipping off in a pretty-awesome-if-I-don’t-say-so-myself spectacular of capoeira-like prowess, hook-kicking the yellow one in the side of the head before wresting the gun from the red one’s hands and turning it on him.

  The red suit collapses in a clanking heap as a surly-looking Hammersmith gets himself together to angle back at me, that big meaty right of his sweeping away a faux antique-looking desk-counter-type thing as flimsy as a kid’s science project.

  “You don’t do that to me,” the bruiser says as if just saying it makes it a thing, which, you know, it totally doesn’t.

  “Looks like I just did,” I tell him and shrug.

  He lumbers at me, left fist transforming into a spiked maul, but he’s swimming in treacle compared to me. I layer a patina of punches up the side and back he exposes, then when he swivels around, I am all over him like a rash, fists not much more than ant bites themselves it seems as I pound up along his other side just like Tony Danza duking it out in the meatworks in Rocky.

  “Give it up, Hammer-boy,” I say as I back off breathing heavier than he appears to be from my assault.

  “Fuck you.”

  “What were you thinking? Nab a sack of gold bars or empty out the safe deposit boxes or just haul ass with a fresh cash delivery? You know it doesn’t work like that.”

  Hammersmith just looks at me all sullen and shit, lank greasy black hair over the eyes he blows aside more like a fashion model than some gargantuan future supermax prison inmate. And in that look there’s a brief grunt of acknowledgement.

  “You blew it, huh?” I say to him. “What was it? Die-packs? Those things explode, you know, mark all the cash. They’ve got DNA-scanning tech in half these places now. I mean, I know you could just pull off the bank manager’s arm or something and get what you want, but they double-proof and triple safe these things.”

  “Sounds like you’ve done some thinkin’ about it,” the villain says.

  “Well shit, I’m working for nothing over here,” I say with a hurt shrug. “Yeah, I’ve thought about it. Who hasn’t?”

  Before Hammersmith can say we should team up and split the difference, I throw both palms open and empty everything I’ve got into him.

  His eyes roll up in his head and he crashes to his knees with enough force I swear the fucking floor shudders, and then he’s over on his face and the Feebs’ tactical units come streaming in and everyone’s shouting at me to put my hands up and I am just laughing at these dimwits, hands on my narrow hips as I angle around the room with my best cheesy grin anticipating the photographs, eyes scanning over the ballistic armour-clad figures that pass around me like water in a stream and wonder whether something more durable might be better for my costume than my peacock’s spandex which now sports a great big tear under my right armpit.

  * * *

  THE NEWS REPORTER slips me her card with a meaningful wink as her crew pack away their gear, but just as I tuck it into my belt and contemplate doing the crouch thing and getting the hell out of here, a female voice calls my name with that ineluctable mix of desperation and frustration I find so appealing.

  The agent’s name is Siren, or so I think. Unlike the plebians in their off-the-rack suits, she wears a white business suit with a crème calfskin vest by Vivica Allen and high-heeled, cherry red Christian Louboutin boots under her slacks. Her short, crisply dyed black hair is long at the fringe like she’s the last hold-out for some fashion trend from some far-flung parallel dimension, the contrast distinctive and memorable on her pale face. While not beautiful by any means, she is memorable, and her expression shows she means business as she strides up to me with a pugnacious leer itself worth the price of admission.

  “I need to speak to you,” she says.

  “Siren, right?”

  She tilts her head at me in surprise. “Yes?”

  “Um, sorry,” I say and try and remember where we met exactly. “What were you, um, after?”

  “Nothing to do with this. You can stand easy. The anxiety’s radiating off you like stink lines on a cartoon. Chill.”

  “If you’re a telepath you can tell then I’m not anxious about anything,” I say with a bit of starch in my voice. “I’m just wondering what shit you FBI queers are going to drop on me this time.”

  “Queers, are we? How nice of you to be so sensitive with your terminology.”

  “Oh, sorry. Are you a dyke?”

  She just looks back irascibly.

  “That’s good actually. I thought maybe we . . . we boned or . . . something.”

  “You’d remember me if I fucked you,” she says, then adds, “And I’d never forgive myself. Come on. Let’s go somewhere we can talk. I need your help.”

  This is about the best offer I’ve had all morning and it’s not quite 8am yet. Dutifully chastened, I follow her to the chopper trying to look as unobtrusive as a six-foot man dressed head-to-toe in red-and-white lycra can manage.

  * * *

  ARRAIGNED TO FBI Headquarters, I cool my heels for half an hour while bureaucrats and anonymous agents hurry hither and thither. Siren digs up some coffee for me and I move where I’m sitting three times before the handsome agent returns with a chagrined look.

  “Sorry to screw you around so long,” she says. “We’re just scrambling to get everything in order. Will you come this way?”

  “Lady, I don’t get paid for this gig, but time’s still money, you dig?” I say to her, grimacing at my accidental poetry even as I stand with a great show of reluctance. “How about just telling me what I’m doing here?”

  “The short version is our hands are tied and we need your help with a case,” Siren replies.

  “Why do you need me?”

  “You’re a free agent,” she says. “We’re waiting on the chain of evidence and the chain of command, and when you cross two chains, you get a—”

  “Clusterfuck,” I say. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one befo
re.”

  “Come with me,” she says. “It’ll be easier if you can see.”

  So I follow her down the corridor and a few right turns before we enter a partitioned interview room. Beyond the soundproofed one-way glass sits a pretty, delicate-looking woman in designer clothes, a handbag worth more than whatever’s probably in it on the scuffed formica table, arms folded across her narrow chest as she makes like she doesn’t know she’s being watched as she waits for someone to show her the courtesy of actually entering the room. Her haircut looks like it’d cost a week’s wages, but beneath the angled, blonded fringe I see blue eyes that water with pain and evoke in me the sympathy any red-blooded man would feel for a beautiful woman in such obvious misery.

  “What’s the story?” I ask in a hushed voice.

  “That’s Tiffany Le Garnier,” Siren says. “She’s the latest victim in a spree of sexual assaults that are continuing at an alarming rate.”

  Siren directs my gaze to a non-descript dude sitting at the table this side of the one-way mirror, but as the agent opens a manila folder and starts spreading women’s mugshots on the table, I look back into the interview room and study the finely-etched profile of the despondent woman waiting for whoever is meant to see her.

  “It’s very sad, but I don’t know what this has to do with me,” I say.

  Siren points at the photos and I acknowledge the spread that—apart from the running mascara and clear emotional devastation—could be headshots from a casting agency, given the women’s obvious beauty.

  “It’s a parahuman behind these assaults,” Siren says.

  “A . . . super-rapist?”

  “Yep,” she says. “I don’t know why we don’t see more of these, to be honest. Or maybe your garden variety parahuman doesn’t go for the top shelf like this one. Each of these victims is a model or a society woman or a high profile and obviously very attractive target. He’s using some sort of mind control powers and we believe he’s not operating alone.”

  “So there’s a . . . gang?”

  “Not a gang. Miss Le Garnier can give you a better description of the accomplice. She’s waiting in there.”

  “For me?” I blink at Siren and the sheer unorthodoxy of this situation. Normally I am trying to ditch on the FBI and now they’re courting me like I’m the Last Star-fighter or something.

  “Does she even know I’m here?”

  “I told her someone would be coming to see her who can help where our hands are presently tied,” Siren says. “Is that you, Zephyr? Can you help?”

  “I don’t understand why your hands are tied.”

  “We’re waiting on physical evidence to be expedited, and then we need to work up a prosecution brief—and we have no idea of the perpetrator’s identity.”

  “So you’re hoping I’m going to go all Rambo on this one for you?” I ask.

  “I loved Richard Gere in that film,” Siren says. “But you are no Richard Gere, Zephyr. It’s just you and me here—”

  I pause her with a look at the geek in the suit, but Siren just shrugs as if to say “ignore him”.

  “This is just you and me, Zephyr,” she says again. “I’m offering you a direct line on a bad guy hurting innocent women and giving you the chance to do something about it.”

  “You’re giving me a chance, or is it because she’s one of the Le Garniers?”

  Siren blinks as if scolded—and clearly surprised a dumbass like me can connect the woman in the room next door to hundred billion-dollar pharmaceutical company.

  “Just talk to the woman,” she says coldly. “Hell, you can shake her down for a reward when it’s all finished, OK?”

  * * *

  MAYBE I’M A soft touch, but I find myself in the interview room moments later as if by osmosis alone, entering with the poise of a man afraid he might wake the baby, despite being dressed for Hallowe’en. The socialite looks up at me and double-takes and I am not entirely displeased to see the fraught look on her face lighten as she recognises me, then quickly tries to restore her aura of cool by standing and offering me her tiny business-like hand.

  “You’re Zephyr? Tiffany Le Garnier. They told me someone would come. I wasn’t expecting you. Are you . . . FBI now?”

  “Hardly,” I say and slip into a chair and have to make an effort not to adopt my usual laconic grin that might weasel my way into this woman’s designer pants if we were at the Flyaway or Crayons or the Silver Tower or sneaking in the back at Aubergine. However beautiful she might be, the pain is fresh and remains once her smile gives out under the weight of the moment.

  “I guess they told you what happened to me,” Tiffany says.

  “In general terms,” I say. “Obviously I’m . . . very sorry. And shocked. A super-human—”

  “I’m surprised there isn’t more of it, to be frank,” she says, chastened.

  “Hrm, Siren said the same thing.”

  “Well, if you asked most teenage boys what they might do with super powers, using them for such . . . personal gain . . . would seem more obvious than some of the . . . hare-brained schemes you people cook up.”

  “My . . . people?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry Zephyr,” she says quickly. Her hand darts across the table to check mine, which at first—coupled with her upper crust accent and sensibilities—I think is adorable, until I note the hint of panic in her face, her hand on mine as if to quell incipient violence even though none is coming.

  “Siren said you had information that might help me find the person who did this,” I say.

  Tiffany nods.

  “There were two of them,” she says. “Not, you know, two of them, but there was someone—some thing—with him. The man who attacked me. The Storyteller.”

  “Storyteller?”

  “That’s what he called himself.”

  “I ain’t heard of him,” I say and wince at my own grammar.

  “He can . . . he can twist you up in knots. He talks . . . and it’s hard to explain. The police, the FBI, they said he must be a mind-controller to get me to do what I did.”

  “He commanded you?”

  “Not exactly,” Tiffany says. “He just explained things in such a way. . . .”

  Her eyes drift to the corner of the room as she focuses on nothing.

  “He just spoke in such a way that everything made sense, everything I did, every step of the way, I did willingly, until later, and the . . . words wore off.”

  I drink this in a moment and nod, play-acting the detective.

  “Tell me about the other one, the thing.”

  “He had a head like a hyena,” she says.

  And Bingo was his name-o.

  * * *

  I LEAVE THE tête-à-tête with Miss Le Garnier, conflicted between my desire to help a vulnerable woman, and unease that mysterious forces way above my pay grade might have intervened to expedite the so-called justice she and others seek. It irks me to think wealthy elites might get retribution not afforded to people who can barely afford the price of admission to this game we call life. And yet, like the weaponised civilian I am, I can barely refuse the opportunity to right a very definite wrong if afforded the chance to do so. It’s why I get up in the morning, after all. And she is beautiful. And what was done to her—scant on the detail that I am, other than to understand somehow she was coerced as a willing participant thanks to this Storyteller’s mind-bending powers—was very much abhorrent.

  And I also have a solid lead, thanks to her eyewitness account.

  For weeks I’ve been hearing whispers about some clown with an animal head acting as muscle for an unknown mastermind getting into dust-ups with minor criminal gangs up the northern corridor. Now I have more than an inkling we’re talking about the same person, which narrows down my next port of call considerably.

  The Lyceum is equal parts strip shop, strip club and paramilitary academy. The clandestine nature of the thing and the fact guys like I have busted it too many times to keep count means it keeps on the move
like a high class hooker with two pimps. But when your ear’s still connected to the city, there are ways to find a gatekeeper, and on this particular day and occasion that is outside the Pool Room pizzeria in destitute Washington (the suburb, not the city, despite Atlantic City incorporating our capitol in its outer fringes). Izzy sees me coming while he’s on the sidewalk smoking an old stoogie while the pizza crust burns. He takes off like the varmint he’s always been, but up against the guy with the power of a hundred million light bulbs or whatever it is, his behaviour is still as predictable as it is irritating. I know it’s broad daylight and not preferred visiting hours for the bulk of the city’s lowlifes—among whom I can sometimes pass myself off as one despite the gaudy costume—but I’m still catching Izzy with the proverbial pants around ankles. I land the bottom of a fist like a sledgehammer between his skinny shoulders and he goes skidding along the sidewalk and into a fire hydrant. The oddly affectatious spectacles fall from his equally skinny and equally aging skull, the skin over his face like parchment, rendered chimpanzee-like by old age. And despite the inclement weather, the long-time rabblerouser sports his bare, tattoo-riddled arms, hands now shaking as he picks himself up, mouth agape, disbelieving that life’s taken such a terrible turn in the here and now, let alone any other cosmic consequences.

  “‘the fuck you want?” he stammers with falsetto bravado.

  I laugh baldly and grab him by the Motorhead-emblazed vest, helping him upright as much as reminding him of my capable force.

  “The Lyceum,” I tell him. “Where is it?”

  “Gimme a break, Zephyr,” Izzy replies. “You know they’ll do something horrible to me—”

  “What?” I interrupt him. “And I won’t?”

  Izzy snaps his aged jaw shut with an audible clack. Desultory traffic passes by on the blacktop and slowly the old man’s hair-feathered head bows and he nods, more reminiscent of a senile uncle than a one-time mid-level enforcer. They don’t get to go out to pasture up this way. They finish their days in the yard with all the pretenders nipping at their heels.