It's Superman! A Novel (39 page)

As soon as she is sober enough to walk back to her office and her fool head is clear enough to remember the safe combination, Soda is going to take a
look
at that envelope, and maybe, just maybe, find out Richard’s last name.

Some other things, too.

The black cube. Clark shows off. Phone tap.
Scene of the crime. Ciao, Caesar.
●

1

By the time the gentlemen from the Ford Motor Company, the DuPont Corporation, the Union Banking Corporation, the L. Henry Schroder Banking Company, and the investment firm of Brown Brothers/Harriman leave the conference room late this Sunday afternoon, all of them are tipsy and swaying and utterly convinced that Lex Luthor’s robots, God blesh ’em, make the world’s most perfect martinis. The men have become enchanted by the machines as well as by their profit potential. Television. Feh! Lexbots are next!

In combination they pledged a total of twelve million dollars for the construction and outfitting of three Lexbot factories.

“Congratulations,” says Mrs. O.

Still seated at the head of the conference table, Lex is turning a small black socketed cube around and around with the fingers of his right hand. “Thank you.” He sets the cube down in front of him and picks up a remote-control device. When he presses a sequence of buttons, one of the two luxury Lexbots in the room steps away from the wall and glides to the table. “And tomorrow,” he says, “I’m expecting to do equally well. Even better.”

In the morning Lex is scheduled to meet with executives from the August Thyssen Bank, the Dresdner Bank, German General Electric, and Braunkohle-Benzin A.G. In the afternoon he is seeing representatives from Fiat, Centro Stile Zagato, and the Pontifical Court.

During the next several weeks he expects investment capital to roll in with almost ridiculous ease.

As he realized the day he first saw Caesar Colluzo doodling on a pad in that lecture hall, nobody can resist a robot. Nobody.

Mrs. O watches Lex get up and open a small panel in the back of the machine. He snugly fits the cube inside. Shuts the panel. Then he walks over to the long mirror on the wall, reaches up, and pulls down a blackout shade.

“If you don’t need me anymore . . .”

“Now or entirely?” He stabs in another sequence of buttons on the remote-control device.

“. . . I’d like to go home.”

“You do that, Helen. Have Paulie take you in his car. And tell Caesar I want to have a word with him upstairs.” He glances at his watch. “Ten minutes.”

“And what about the admen?”

“Order them more coffee and sandwiches.” He cocks his head at Mrs. O’Shea. “Leave.”

“Yes, sir. Congratulations again.” She hesitates, then: “Lex, I think we might have a problem with Ceil Stickowski. I didn’t like the way she looked at you when—”

“Don’t worry about Ceil. Just go.”

She closes the door firmly behind her.

Lex presses a red button.

From the Lexbot comes a low rasping sound that turns into a hum, then a beep, and suddenly the twelve-foot-long table is hurled across the conference room. It smashes against the far wall, blasting cracks through the plaster.

The door reopens, and Mrs. O sticks her head back into the room. She is pale. She looks at the table, its surface now scorched and blistered. Here and there tiny flames struggle in patches of varnish, then wink out.

Giving a snort of glee, Lex manipulates the remote-control again. The Lexbot swivels and moves noiselessly back to its carrying case, steps into it, and stands motionless. With yet another poke of Lex’s finger at a button, a gray one this time, it disassembles itself, turning back into a gleaming metal post. The top section of the post slides down, nesting in the section below it. When the top of the post is flush with the ledge of the carrying case, the lid slaps shut with a satisfying
click.

Lex repeats the process for the second robot.

“Mrs. O? One last thing. Tell Paulie to grab these and carry them down when you’re both heading out. He can drop them off at Water Street.”

With a curt nod he walks out.

Mrs. O remains in the doorway, frowning. As she turns finally to leave, the conference table—its four legs as charred and friable as if they’ve spent hours burning in a fireplace—suddenly crashes to the floor.

2

“Is this Lois Lane?”

She doesn’t recognize the caller’s voice. A woman’s. “Yes . . .”

“The reporter?”

“Yes.”

“I hope you don’t mind me calling you at home, Miss Lane. I called the
Daily Planet
but you weren’t there, and they wouldn’t give me your exchange. But it’s in the directory, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Who is this?”

“Miss Lane, I’d like to speak with you about Lex Luthor. I read your stories in the paper and I think we should talk.”

“And your name is . . . ?”

“I’m sorry, it’s Ceil. Ceil Stickowski? Mrs. Herman Stickowski.”

“Sticky’s
wife?”

“His widow, Miss Lane. Do you think we might get together?”

Lois says, “Could you hold on for just one second?” She lays down the receiver and then goes and gently closes the bedroom door, where Ben Jaeger is asleep in his undershirt and skivvies. She returns to the phone and says, “Of course we can get together, Mrs. Stickowski—tonight?”

3

While the Invisible Man is making his tenth circuit of the special exhibition gallery, the Saucer-Man from Saturn, who by this time has had his fill of Berenice Abbott’s photographs, drifts back out into the corridor and strolls around the museum by himself. Walking from room to room, floor to floor, cursorily inspecting displays of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century furniture, costumes, theater posters, and the like. George Washington’s boudoir slippers, Alexander Hamilton’s comb and brush. A re-creation of John D. Rockefeller’s bedroom, circa 1880.

The elastic band on Clark’s black mask is uncomfortably tight. And the mask itself feels constricting, makes his cheeks sweat, and feel slimy, and his eyebrows itch. He doesn’t know how the Lone Ranger puts up with it.

He goes into the gift shop and purchases a few postal cards. The cashier smiles at his costume. “Shouldn’t that be a
Z
on your chest?”

“Pardon me?”

The cashier points to the red
S
. “I thought you spelled Zucchini with a
Z
.”

“Zucchini?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be one of those Zucchini brothers that get shot out of a cannon?”

Strolling back into the main hall, Clark finds a cushioned bench. For a while he watches people, mostly families with small children. Some of the children are dressed for Halloween. None of the adults are.

He finds himself thinking about Diana Dewey. He can recall everything about her, but what he
especially
recalls is her croaky voice. It was adorable.
She
was adorable. He misses her, wants to see her again. But now he is suddenly thinking about Lois Lane. He’s never met anyone like her before. Ever. In his whole
life
!

But now he’s thinking of Diana again: making him soup and tea, applying sticking plaster to the only cut he’s ever had . . .

Diana.

Only twenty years old and already Clark is like one of those no-good, two-timing rambler types that Plato Beatty used to sing about. He’s like Blackjack David! He’s disgusted.

Yes, but still he wants to see Lois Lane again. Soon.

To clear his mind of both hankerings and reprimands, he licks the point of his pencil, selects a postal card with a picture of a clipper ship on the front side, and begins composing a note on the back to his father. Hi! How are you? I am fine.

He pauses, glancing up to further gather his thoughts. That’s when he notices a series of portraits in heavy gilt frames on the wall across the lobby. With a narrowing of his eyes and the smallest mental
oomph
, he can read the identification plates affixed below the oil paintings. It’s a gallery of the English governors of New York.

Clark licks his pencil point again and turns his attention back to the postal card.

But almost immediately he glances back up again. Running his gaze down the line of portraits, left to right, he stops to focus on the portrait of Sir Danvers Osborne, Baronet, appointed 10 October 1753.

Like the rest of his fellow royal governors, Sir Danvers looks haughty and mildly cross.

The problem is—and Clark hopes this doesn’t mean he is inordinately finicky—but the problem is the picture frame: it’s crooked. Not terribly crooked, just out of alignment with the others along the wall.

Clark wants to go over there and—adjust it.

Which would probably set off bells and end up in his being ejected.

Well, if it doesn’t bother the guards, if it doesn’t bother the
curators,
it shouldn’t bother him. And it really is none of his business. Crossing one leg over the other, he returns his full attention to the postal card. The weather is good but getting chilly. The buildings are—

The Invisible Man finally appears. “You ready to go?”

By now it is late afternoon. The temperature has fallen sharply and there’s a nippy wind. But that doesn’t bother Clark, and Willi has his trench coat. They decide to walk for a while, turning south at Fifth Avenue and heading back downtown.

“So I guess you enjoyed that show,” says Clark.

Willi says, “Yeah.”

“What were your favorite pictures?”

Willi shrugs.

“Mine were the up-close bridge ones, just the girders? And that newsstand with the million magazines.”

“Yeah, they were good.”

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t
sound
fine, you seem . . . I don’t know. You
sure
you’re okay?”

“I’m
fine. God.”
Willi stops to light a cigarette, cupping his hands but still going through four matches.

“Hey, you know,” says Clark. “I was thinking. If you have to smoke, you should consider switching to a brand that gives you coupons. We could save them up for something—like a bridge table or something.”

Willi lifts his dark glasses and shoots Clark a dirty look through his eyeholes.

Without any conscious thought or decision they enter Central Park at Ninety-ninth Street onto a footpath that winds past baseball fields and running tracks.

“What’re you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” says Willi.

“You’re all mopey again.”

“I’m not mopey.” He picks at the cotton strip below his bottom lips and irritably tugs it down. “Why do you always have to talk all the time?”

“I don’t.”

“So don’t.”

“Fine, I won’t.”

“Great.”

Ten seconds later Clark says, “Hey, come here,” and pinches hold of one of Willi’s coat sleeves, pulling him off the path onto a graveled running track. “Just stand here.” He releases Willi’s sleeve and stands beside him, two feet apart. “Race you.”

“I don’t want to—”

“I won. You lost.”

“What?”

“I just ran all the way around the track—didn’t you see me?” He laughs and punches Willi in the shoulder playfully. “Wanna race again?”

“You’re full of it, Kent. You didn’t run around any track—you’re not
that
fast.”

“Who says? Watch.”

Clark is here, then not here, then here again.

“I took it a little slow that time, so you’d believe me. What do you think?”

Willi clamps a hand around the lower part of his face, squeezes the wrapping till it gathers. He walks back to the footpath. Keeps going.

Clark is twenty yards ahead of him, arms folded, the picture of patience.

Willi goes around him, cuts across the transverse road at Ninety-seventh Street, and strides across South Meadow with the high wall of Croton Reservoir on his left.

“Willi! Hey!
Up here!”

Willi grudgingly stops.

“Up here!”

But while he knows where Clark is, knows that he’s standing (strutting, actually) on top of the reservoir, Willi refuses to lift his eyes. He merely shakes his head and resumes walking.

Half a minute later, as Willi trudges along beside Children’s Playground, he comes upon Clark seated on a bench with one leg crossed over the other.

“What’d I do? Did I do something wrong?”

Willi gives an exasperated sigh and flings himself down on the bench beside Clark. “I’m sorry. All right?”

“You don’t have to apologize. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

“What’s
wrong
?”

“I mean what’s wrong
now
? Did something happen at the museum?”

“Those pictures were great, weren’t they?”

“Yeah, sure. So?”

“That’s what I want to do. That’s what I want to do
again.
But I can’t. And I won’t ever.”

“That’s not true.”

“Oh, you’re so sure? How am I supposed to get my life back?”

Clark says, “I thought that’s what
I
was for.”

Willi removes his dark glasses and sticks them in his coat pocket. “You willing to snatch Lex Luthor and threaten to throw him off the Brooklyn Bridge?”

“Maybe.”

4

“I hope you don’t mind me calling you at home, Miss Lane. I called the
Daily Planet
but you weren’t there, and they wouldn’t give me your exchange. But it’s in the directory, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Who is this?”

“Miss Lane, I’d like to speak with you about Lex Luthor. I read your stories in the paper and I think we should talk.”

“And your name is . . . ?”

“I’m sorry, it’s Ceil. Ceil Stickowski? Mrs. Herman Stickowski.”

“
Sticky’s
wife?”

“His widow, Miss Lane. Do you think we might get together?”

“Could you hold on for just one second? . . . Of course we can get together, Mrs. Stickowski—tonight?”

“Would nine o’clock be too late? I know it’s silly, but I have some programs I like to listen to.”

“Nine o’clock, then. And where would you like to meet?”

“My house? Would that be all right?”

“More than all right, Mrs. Stickowski.”

“Ceil.”