The City That Heroes Built Read online

“I thought the favor was driving you here.”

  “No, dude. If all I needed was a ride I could have ubered or called a cab. I need a favor.”

  “Jesus, man,” I said.

  “Just settle down.” He looked like a wreck. I'm not sure how much of that was the booze and how much of it was my driving. I am an awful driver. You know those surveys where eighty percent of people think they are excellent drivers? I have no such illusions. I hate driving.

  Fiver continued. “Look, here's what I need you to do. You go to the house. You tell the people that answer the door that you're a friend of Todd's. They'll invite you in.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Dude, look around at this neighborhood. People that live here will let you in. You go in. You sit on their couch. You tell them you're a friend of Todd's, you're sorry about what happened to him, and you're going to take care of it.”

  “What do you mean take care of it?”

  “Dude.”

  “What if they ask? You want me to tell them I don't know? You want me to be vague? You want me to tell them I'm going to douse someone in gasoline and light them on fire?”

  “Dude, I'm asking for a favor because I don't want to get in to this with someone. You just go in. You tell the nice people that open the door that everything is going to be okay. Then you leave. You make them feel good, and you relieve some stress. It is a simple good deed. They'll feel good, you'll feel good, it's a win-win.”

  “Why…”

  “Dude, what?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “I was going to ask why you don't do it yourself, but you look like shit, so I get it.”

  “Be polite. Say 'yes, ma'am' and all that.”

  “What if they ask me questions?”

  “Bluff.”

  “Okay, alright, let me get into character.” I closed my eyes for a second, thought, “Fuck it,” and went.

  Todd's parents lived in a cookie-cutter California upper-middle class neighborhood. Mercs and BMWs in most of the driveways, SUVs in the rest. Lawns were all mowed, windows all washed. I passed a family getting back from church, and I waived. The place reminded me of a commercial for cleaning products. Even the weather was better. The gloom that had floated over my neighborhood had burned off by the time we got to Arroyo Grande in north Santa Maria.

  I knocked on the door of Todd's parents house, realizing I didn't know Todd's last name, what had happened to him, or anything else that would let me prove that I was Todd's friend. I didn't think that I would be able to bluff my way through this.

  The door opened. The woman who answered looked tired, but not particularly traumatized. She looked about twenty years beyond the typical soccer mom, pleasantly dressed for a Sunday morning, ready for a day of golf or shopping. She didn't say anything, just looked me over, seeking recognition, and finding none.

  “I'm a friend of Todd's,” I said. Her faced flashed suspicion. “I'm sorry about what happened to him. I'm going to take care of it.”

  An awkward silence followed the delivery of the message. Todd's mom looked relieved. She opened the door and stood aside.

  “Come in, please,” she said.

  I stepped into a living room with leather sofas aimed at a giant TV. Her husband looked up. He had the look of a man who would be missing the game of the week to take his wife shopping. He swiped over a tablet, sipped his coffee as his wife said,

  “Bo, this is Todd's friend.”

  Bo stood up and reached across the coffee table to shake my hand.

  “Todd never told us your name,” he said.

  “Well,” I said and shrugged.

  “Of course, of course, we don't need to know.”

  “The police were here last night,” Todd's mom said. “They were much nicer than the last time. Didn't ask a lot of questions, just wanted to let us know what happened before we saw it on the news.”

  “I'm sorry,” I said. “Everything is going to be okay. I just want you to know that. It's going to be taken care of.

  Both parents nodded. They understood better than I did what I was saying.

  “Do you know why they did it? The police couldn't say,” Todd's mother said.

  “Wouldn't say,” said Todd's father.

  “I wanted to look on the Internet, but Bo said it would just worry me more.”

  “No one knows but the people who did this,” said Bo.

  “Why do you think someone would take Todd's body?” Todd's mother asked, answering one of my questions, but leaving me with many more.

  “I don't know,” I said. “But I'll take care of it.”

  That seemed to reassure her.

  “Thank you,” she said. Then she sat and broke into tears. Her husband consoled her. I let myself out.

  Fiver checked his watch when I got back.

  “You couldn't give me any heads up about that?” I asked. “I just told a stranger that I was going to find her dead son's body which has apparently been stolen.”

  “You shouldn't have gotten into it,” he said. “You should have just said the bit and left.”

  “I was trying to show a little compassion.”

  “You went off script.”

  “So?”

  “You were just supposed to say you were going to take care of it, not promise you were going to find her son's body.”

  “You didn't tell me what take care of it meant! I had to improvise.”

  “You want to start the car?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “If you can drop me off at Speyside Avenue, I'd appreciate it.”

  “I'm doing you a lot of favors,” I noted.

  “It's the same favor. And a worthwhile investment, you'll find.”

  “How's that?”

  “I owe you a favor.”

  “What if I don't need a favor from you?”

  “You spend it for someone else,” Fiver said.

  “What? Like I say, 'This guy owes me a favor', and then you'll do something for someone I know?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “So you use favors as currency.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “What if I need a really big favor?”

  “Then you owe me one. Seriously, dude, you never do things for people?”

  “Not that often, no.”

  “Well then.”

  He gave directions. I dropped him off outside a bar.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “I'm going to the gym across the street, jackass.”

  “You're going to work out hung over?”

  “I'm not hung over, yet.”

  He reached into a pocket and handed me a card. “Thanks for that. You did a good thing for those people.” He crossed the street and went into the gym.

  I went home as well.

  Of course, I was going to tackle the mystery in front of me. A quick search online found an article about the grave robbery. Todd Baltino's body was stolen from Second Horizons Cemetery, near his parents' house. I crosschecked their address to confirm who they were.

  Ten normal searches for Todd Baltino led nowhere, but Second Horizons had a good database matched with the location of the graves. I also found a match in the archives of Horizon High School newspaper. Short article and obituary for Todd Baltino, a couple of quotes from classmates, and of course, the ever-classy reader comments.

  Serves him right for ditching school all the time. I'm sorry he died, but if he hadn't ditched that day, he'd still be alive.

  Follow up comments criticizing the post, including, So you think God sent an earthquake to punish him for ditching school?

  The article was mid-May, the school paper being published once a week. I should have known before I searched it, but the Great Northridge Quake happened May 6th, 2016. It destroyed a lot of Northridge again, and most of the older parts of Santa Maria.

  In Santa Maria, the Guard and the New Powers jumped into action to help out. A tragic mid-air collision between Guard member Firefly and New Power mem
ber Screamingo left Screamingo dead.

  I pulled the Firefly up from the Guard database. She retired in June that year. Disappeared, though the wiki had some theories that she died and the Guard never announced it.

  Screamingo didn't have a lot of paper on him. Some mention of the New Powers, though, not much. They didn't have any marquee names or amazing powers like the others. I found the bit about Screamingo's death. The Sightline Tower was coming down and Valor and Screamingo raced to help. People were running away, while EMTs and firefighters were running towards it.

  Screamingo had this really annoying shriek when he flew. The noise would be often be reported on social media. In his rush to help, Screamingo crashed into Firefly. His sound choked out, and he fell. No one was close enough to help. The New Powers took him to the hospital, but he couldn't be saved. I dug for more information. The police investigated, but they didn't release his name. The earthquake was news for the next month. Screamingo's death was lost in the carnage.

  It occurred to me that I was trying to figure out who took Screamingo's body and why. It remained possible that his grave was picked at random, but unlikely. I looked for recent grave robberies. A quick search found four instances. It took a lot more looking to find names. Each one popped up in my search of the news attached to a minor supra. The pattern was clear, but just in case, I went through the news archives to read about the New Powers' battles. No enemies stood out.

  I kept reading about the New Powers and realized that there was a fair chance the Fiver was one of them. Todd Baltino was 16 when he died five years ago. I figured Fiver was at least 25, which put him out of the range of a high school friend. He asked me to go speak to the parents. I assumed because he looked like hell, but I could have been the one to go in his place so he wouldn't be connected to Screamingo in case the police or someone worse were observing the Baltinos' house. If someone had been, they could have assumed that I was connected to the New Powers. I'd basically said as much to Todd's parents.

  The New Powers had broken up by the end of 2017, when I started to really get into reading about supras, so I didn't know a lot about them. I did the research.

  If Fiver was one of the New Powers, he was either Rebel or Sloppy Toaster. He didn't have the sense of humor of Sloppy Toaster. That made him likely Rebel, though the minute I figured that, I wondered if Fiver was simply a random person who figured out Todd Baltino was Screamingo and wanted to re-assure his parents. That connection wasn't difficult to make.

  While my research was generally pointless, I liked to read about Supras, and it made me realize the value of a favor from Fiver.

  That night I got a message to meet up with a couple of guys I know from online. There's a website called Supra-stories, really just a message board for supra-fans. We met up for pizza and beers. There were four of us. We talked about supras, pretty much the same as we did online. Jen mentioned that I hadn't been online for a few days.

  “Yeah, I fell into a rabbit hole researching an old superhero team, started pulling a thread.”

  “I did the same thing with the History of New York Supras,” Nigel said. “You read that? Insane. Just opens up layer after layer of connections. You can't help but read for days.”

  “Meyers,” Jen said, referring to the supra researcher, Charles Meyers and his theory that supras had some sort of pheromone that attracted other supras. It was meant to answer the question of how groups of people with secret identities meet up and form supra groups. There was some interesting research, such as distorted numbers of supras marrying supras, strange coincidences and chance meetings, which mean very little without actually being able to detect and measure the pheromone. Meyers said he did, but he disappeared before his research could be presented. It's a widely believed conspiracy theory that the government picked him up so they could exploit his discoveries. Other theories include that villains grabbed him, or he works for Bio-Citadel Inc.

  Nigel nodded. Mike rolled his eyes. We'd all been through the arguments online. I'm sure they'd log in and continue, but in person we were all pretty civil, no sense in ruining one of the few social interactions we had.

  “So which rabbit hole?” Mike asked.

  “The New Powers,” I said.

  “That's like one search,” Nigel said. “They never really did anything.”

  “Yeah, that's why it took so long. Nothing really out there.”

  Nigel said to Mike, “Didn't you have all the New Powers stuff?” Mike was zoned out. “Oy! Mikey!”

  “Oh, sorry, miles away. What did you ask?”

  “New Powers. Didn't you have a good archive of them you gave me?”

  “I don't even remember,” Mike said.

  Nigel said. “I've got it. Good stuff. Might be on a back up drive. I'll hunt it down for you.”

  “What got you looking at the New Powers?” Mike asked.

  How much to share with people? On one hand, they were all pretty good people and are killer at research; on the other, I didn't really want them to know what I knew.

  “I was just looking at the Guard and fell into looking for Lady Thirteen's background,” I said.

  “Yeah, I keep wondering when those guys are going to come out of retirement,” Mike said.

  “Two of those guys are women,” Jen said. “The other one is a former supra-villain, and he's old. My guess is never.”

  “Plus Firefly retired before the rest of them,” I said.

  Jen said, “I don't see women coming out of retirement.”

  “What does being a woman have to do with not coming out of retirement?” Mike asked.

  “Chances are, they are moms. Second, women are less motivated by ego, which is why people come out of retirement or never retire in the first place. Plus, thinking about fitting into a spandex suit is intimidating. Third, I've got to believe that the amount of work that old people have to put in to staying fit is way more than when they were young, even if they have powers. Fourth, even if they were totally into it, they'd have to put up with the celebrity of it all, which is amazing for 20-somethings, but after 40- who wants to be reading the news and see an article with their picture titled, “Worst Supra Beach Bods” or some shit?”

  “Dudes go through the same thing,” Mike said. “A beer belly in spandex is awful.”

  “Yeah, but guys still think it's okay!” Jen laughed. “You seen Big Blue Meanie? That guy should not be in tights.”

  We fell into debating the least fit supras of all time, a very serious conversation that lasted through the end of the pizza and two more pitchers of beer. Mike begged out of the last beer. “I've got to drive.”

  “I'll have yours,” Nigel said. “I've got to ride the bus.”

  After the beers, we walked Nigel to the bus stop, then Mike to his car.

  “How'd you get here?” Jen asked.

  “Walked,” I said. “I live close. You?”

  “I drove,” she said. “Mind if I hang out for a while? I had a DUI like three years ago, and I don't want to risk a second.”

  “Yeah, cool,” I said. “You mean here, or…”

  “I was thinking your place. We're a little too old to hang out on street corners.”

  “Yeah, cool, I'm this way.”

  We walked down the street past the bars, tattoo shops and Mexican food places.

  “So you got any powers?” Jen asked when we got to my door.

  I laughed. “I've got meticulous attention to detail, and I'm really clean.” I let her in.

  “No kidding,” she said. “I don't think I've been to a straight guy's apartment that was this clean.”

  “I'll take that as a compliment and not as a subtle query into my sexuality,” I said.

  “Not at all,” Jen said. “My friend Byron is just, supra-clean. Like it could literally be his power, or a side effect neurosis.”

  I laughed. “I like to think I haven't approached the neurosis level yet. You want a Coke or something?”

  “Beer?”

  “
Yeah, I've got a couple of IPAs.” I opened the fridge.

  “That's more than a couple,” she said. “Stone?”

  I pulled out beers and popped the cape with my Sentinel bottle opener that squawked, “Crime doesn't pay, villain!” with each bottle cap removed. I handed Jen a bottle. She tapped it against mine.

  “To Santa Maria.”

  “To Santa Maria.”

  We each took a swig.

  “So you never told me what you thought about Meyers,” she said.

  “I think he came up for an explanation for something that's a normal human interaction and ignored that it's a normal human interaction. You?”

  “I think he's full of shit,” she said, and kissed me.

  The beers were warm when we finished them an hour later.

  I woke up to her leaving.

  “We should do this again,” she said. The door closed behind her.

  I went back to sleep.

  Wiki Entry: Yankee Station.

  The Yankees or Yankee Station Gang were supras that operated off of US carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin. Lieutenants Wallace "Coal" Cole, John "Concrete" Adams, Henry "Dynamic" Jones, John "Impossible" Johnson and Enrique "Senor Excellente" Lantos were pilots put through a series of tests by the Navy in 1967 which gave them the ability to fly. Their training was adjusted and they escorted US strikes against North Vietnam. Their mission was to recover downed pilots, collect targeting information, assess battle damage, and engage enemy supras. Their first and most famous missions included rescuing LCDR John McCain, son of Commander-in-Chief Pacific Command, John S McCain Jr, and other POWs from the Hanoi Hilton. John McCain III would later go on to become a US Senator.

  The five were quickly promoted through the rank of Captain for their daring and important raids. Shortly after returning to the states following the war, the Yankee Station Gang found the public increasingly hostile to them, despite their heroics. The indictment of Captain Dynamic for the murder of Jane Fonda in 1977 also led to the group being ostracized. The Yankee Station Gang resigned their commissions in the US Navy and went underground rather than answer to the murder charges. The group made several appearances against major villains in the 80s and 90s, and are reportedly the inspiration for the tv show The A Team. Although advanced in years, they have a strong background in military tactics, information gathering and avoiding the government. They are rumored to have trained several supra groups and individuals throughout the country. They're linked to various supras on the wikis.