Comic Book Hero Chapter 6

After the phone call to Murray Tom had tossed his suitcase into the old blue pickup and left, hitting the highway just after 9:00. By 9:45 he had parked in the lot behind Murray’s warehouse and was already inside, a cup of Murray’s double strength coffee in his hand. He hadn’t even had to press the intercom, the outside gate and the back door had buzzed open as soon as he approached.

Tom took a sip of the hot brew, wincing. “Christ, Murray, how many batteries did you have to soak to get this? I think I just lost my stomach lining.”

“You’re just a punk, Blackwood. When we’re on the set we live off this stuff.” Murray suited actions to words, gulping down fully half of his own cup in a single go, then smacking his lips with noisy relish. “Aaahh, nectar of the Gods.”

Tom snorted. “Okay, that takes care of my staying awake problem for the rest of the week. So what am I doing here, Murray? If it’s that whacko plan about playing superhero again, forget it, I’m not interested.”

“Ha! Who are you trying to convince, Tommy, me or yourself? But lets forget about that for now. If you’re still set on going down to ‘Frisco, I’ve got an offer for you.” Murray swiveled in his chair and then fumbled through the piles of paper and loose junk on his desk. He fished out a set of keys on the end of a white rabbits foot, holding them up for Tom to see.

“You’ve got no idea how expensive housing is in the bay area, do you, Tom? Especially hotels. Let me tell you, even if you stay at some fleabag or even a motel, you’re looking at five hundred to a thousand dollars for a week’s vacation down there. Not to mention parking fees and meals, and you know you can kiss any thoughts of privacy goodbye, too. There’s no way you can come and go in one of those places without risking being seen. So what you really need, and what I’ve got, is an apartment!” So saying, Murray tossed the keys and the attached rabbits foot across the room and into Tom’s lap.

Tom picked the keys up uncertainly, looking from them to the smug grin on Murray’s face. “You’re joking, right? These are keys to an apartment in San Francisco? Damn, where’d you get them?”

“No, yes, and a friend asked me to keep an eye on it. Look, there was this guy I knew who owned a small studio, with a prop warehouse down in the Mission district. The top floor of the warehouse was converted into a loft apartment for visiting out-of-towners working on projects there. I stayed there myself a few times, the place is great.

“Anyway, the guy who owned the studio died about a year ago, and his heirs have kept the estate in probate ever since. The way they’re fighting over all the scraps, it’ll probably be at least another three or four years before they get around to selling the damned thing. There’s an alarm system and a security patrol in the area, but the trustees still worry about it being vacant, so they gave me the keys and asked me to check on it whenever I’m in town. Believe me, as long as you don’t set fire to the drapes, they’ll be glad you’re there.”

“Huh. Well, thanks, Pablo. This’ll help a lot. I really appre—“

“And all I want in return is one tiny little favor.”

Tom swore, something dirty, shaking his head and glaring daggers at the little man. “Damn it, Murray,” he growled, “With you there’s always a catch. Okay, so what the hell do you want from me this time?”

“Hey, Tom,” Murray said, leaning back in the chair and spreading his hands, the picture of wounded innocence. “Don’t worry about it, buddy, it’s nothing, really. While you’re down there, I just need your help for about an hour or so every night. I have a friend, see. He might, I say might, have a little bit of trouble with some local bad guys, and I’m concerned about him. He says he’s okay, and if anybody can take care of himself it’s Dieter, but I would sure feel a lot better if someone was watching him when he closes up at night. That’s all, Tom, I swear it.”

Tom looked at the little man from under beetled brows, saying nothing. He had known Murray for years, ever since he had started his online comic book business, and was confident that he knew him as well as anybody did. So he was pretty sure that, so far, Murray was telling the truth. Still without saying anything he cocked one eyebrow, a silent invitation to continue.

Murray hurriedly took it. “Look, Dieter owns a martial arts Dojo in S.F., runs it with his daughter Holly. A few weeks ago some punks from a local street gang tried to lean on him for a contribution. A protection racket, and not very subtle about it, either. Dieter put both guys down and then called the cops. A week later four of them tried jumping him and Holly in the parking lot, and this time Dieter put all of them in the ER. After that, the cops had a car patrol the lot every night at closing, and the problems stopped for awhile.

“But last week the cops finally pulled their guys off parking lot duty. And now to make matters worse, Dieter fractured his leg in training, and has to wear a brace. So I’m worried. I mean, Dieter can normally take care of himself better than anybody I know, and Holly is almost as good as her old man. But without the cops there and until his leg heals, I would really like it if somebody with a cell phone was watching over them when they close shop.”

“Uh huh,” Tom replied, his tone heavy with suspicion. “And that’s all of it, right? You wouldn’t be trying to set me up to play Batman or something now, would you, Pablo?”

Murray frowned, his smile gone. “Look, Tom…” he began.

“Maybe arrange a little show for me, huh, Pablo? Get a couple of your friends to play crippled old man and damsel in distress? Is that the idea?”

The frown was replaced by a scowl, a scarlet flush beginning to creep up Murray’s neck. It was a red warning flag that the other failed to see. “Dammit, Tom, I am not—” he tried again.

“So I go down there and, what? Follow your friends around the Tenderloin until they get some muggers or gangbangers to hassle them, and then I come to the rescue, roust the bad guys, and play hero? And maybe I like it so much, I throw myself into that stupid idea of yours and put on some freaking spandex body suit with matching cape, then play Captain Goodguy and get shot at. And all just so you can get your rocks off playing Jimmy Olsen—”

WHAA-AMM!!

The report of Murray’s hand slamming the top of his desk echoed like a shot in the high ceilinged warehouse, so loud that it made his guest jump. The furious glare he directed at Tom was so intense he winced, the stark contrast to Murray’s earlier wheedling a shock. He was used to scornful diatribes and the occasional ranting from his volatile friend, but now he realized that, for the first time, he was actually seeing Pablo Murray really angry. Hell, he was pissed!

The little man stood and pointed a trembling finger at Tom’s chest, spitting out his next words like bullets.

“Damn you, you ignorant, self centered little snot! You think the whole freaking world revolves around Tom Blackmore and his problems. Lemme tell you, I used to babysit Holly when she was little, and I have known Dieter since I got into this business. He choreographed all my first fight scenes. They’re the best friends I’ve ever had, and if you think for one freakin’ minute that I would ever use them, or put them in danger, just to get you off of your damned dead ass—!”

The little man seemed to run out of words, or maybe breath, but not out of fury. He was still shaking, and his face had begun to pass from angry red to a violent purple.

Tom realized just how far over the line he’d gone with his friend. He started seriously thinking about popping up to the ceiling of the hangar, and waiting there until Murray cooled off. The image came to him of a bird, cowering in a tree, while an angry chipmunk raged on the ground below.

No. Dammit, you stepped in it, now you’d better clean it up.

“You’re right” he said, holding up his hands placatingly, his soft words loud in the tense silence following his friends outburst. “You’re right, Pablo, and I apologize. I know you would never use your friends like that, or do anything that would put them or me in danger. You’re not like that, and if it sounded like I thought you were, I’m sorry. I should have known better.”

Slowly the words had their desired effect, and after awhile Murray nodded, breaking the uncomfortable tension. Tom heaved a low sigh. He didn’t have many friends as good as the little FX wizard, and he’d hate like hell to lose him over something so stupid.

“Okay. So, tell me about this apartment.”

*****

Although San Francisco has its detractors, and there are many of them, none can ever deny it’s intrinsic beauty, neither the natural nor the man-made. Set on the knob shaped head of a peninsula that juts off the Northern California coast like an appendix, the city by the bay is packed onto forty-nine square miles of lush greenery, that spreads over a crumpled topography of steep hills and sandy beaches. With a population of over 800,000, the people who live there are a true multicultural cross section of almost every race, religion, and country on the face of the planet. The eclectic result is reflected everywhere, in San Francisco’s art, it’s literature, and it’s incredibly diverse lifestyles. And, of course, in it’s architecture.

The glass curtain walls of the towering skyscrapers of the financial district cast their shadows over the Colonial and Elizabethan homes of Alamo square, dainty Queen Anns sprawling at the shiny feet of modern Goliaths. The dragon decorated gates of the maze of Chinatown can be seen from the ostentatious mansions of Russian and Knob Hills, ancient culture overlooked by old money. The clean and precise military buildings of the Presidio are just a stone’s throw from the decay of the Tenderloin, and an urban blight of strip malls and track houses rings the lush woods and meadows of Golden Gate Park.

To Tom it was just like going to Disneyland.

The apartment had been everything Murray had promised, and then some, occupying the entire top floor of a small, three-floor warehouse. It sat on top of a tall hill surrounded by others of its like, and in fact its roof was a good ten feet higher than even the closest buildings, which was the type of thing that Tom now noticed almost instinctively. An electric roll up door allowed him into a loading bay with enough floor space for up to five vehicles, which solved the problem of where to park, and an open cage freight elevator took him and his suitcase the rest of the way. The apartment built on the top floor was more like an expensive hotel suite, comfortable to the point of luxurious, and yet it occupied less than a third of the total floor space. The rest of it was over a hundred feet of open area, under fifteen foot ceilings with skylights and an eastern facing wall with a twenty foot section of glass panes, tilted inward at a thirty degree angle. A small door led out onto the rest of the roof, an open expanse that Tom figured would make an excellent launch pad. Or landing pad. Or would it be a runway? There go those damn semantics again.

Full dark started at 7 o’clock, but Tom had waited an extra hour just to be sure. For flying at night he had chosen a thermal t-shirt with a long sleeved black pullover shirt and black denim jeans, and a pair of black Nike’s with the white swoosh painted out. He wore the leather gloves from his first night time flight, but had replaced the itchy wool ski mask with a canvas hunting hood bought from a sporting goods store, also black. A new pair of ski goggles completed the outfit.

Tom inhaled deeply, breathing in the night, letting his senses expand on the darkened rooftop. The air was warm, with a slight breeze coming from the bay, a cool caress with hints of salt-water smells. The sounds of street traffic rolled in from the distance, horns honking and tires swishing on asphalt, far off sirens coming from two different quarters of the compass. The actions of almost a million people thrummed through the surface concrete and deep into the hard bedrock of the city, felt as an echo vibrating through the soles of Tom’s feet. Anticipation with an accompanying bite of fear left his mouth dry, making him swallow nervously. His first solo flight, no backup, no brother to come pick up the pieces if he came crashing down. Oh yeah, maybe just a little bit scary, Mike. With one last deep breath he marshaled his resolve, raised his arms straight out from his sides, and rose into the air.

One hundred, five hundred, a thousand feet. He had to estimate, of course, and idly Tom made a mental note to look into the price of hand held altimeters. Fifteen hundred, two thousand, twenty five hundred feet. Almost half a mile up and the wind whipped around him and tugged at his clothing, chilling him until he stopped, bringing his body to a neutral state of lift. For a while then he simply floated, slowly turning in the quiet night, looking down to see the city as no one else had ever seen it before. Multi-colored lights, stationary buildings and the creeping flow of vehicles, the blood cells and arteries of the body that was San Francisco. White and red and green and blue, twinkling hypnotically in their bizarre patterns of dance. He floated above any clouds and beyond the nimbus of light cast by the city laid out below, and when he looked up there was nothing to mask the stars above, stretching uninterrupted from horizon to horizon. Twinkling heavens met the phosphorescent tipped waves of the sea, which merged with the panorama of the city, and then back to the sea and then once more the stars. He rolled his body slowly, again and again, hardly breathing as he compared in wonder the multiple panoplies of light. He drifted gently with the wind, luxuriating in the incredible silence and wrapped in unearthly beauty. For long, uncounted minutes Tom drank in the sensations like a heady wine, and felt for the first time since a long ago childhood a total, perfect peace.

“YEEEEAA-HHAAAAAWWW!!!” With a whoop of joy Tom jack-knifed his body and dove, the wind a whistling banshee scream rushing past his hood, free-falling down to the ground below. For over five hundred feet he fell, a living bullet aimed at the hard ground below, before willing his body to level out and arch back into a huge and perfect back loop, something the long gone barnstorming aerialists would have called an Immelman. Tom followed with a series of mid-air acrobatics that would have put the Red Baron to shame, barrel rolls and buttonhooks, figure eight’s and bone-shakingly abrupt right angles, sudden stops and quick-as-thought accelerations. He cut a bizarre figure, no less uncanny for being unwitnessed. Dancing above the city like some flying, ghostly madman, his screams and laughter echoed unheard through the night-darkened skies.

Eventually Tom stopped and hovered, panting, looking down at the city sprawling at his feet. Sweat trickled down his back, and his limbs trembled with adrenaline. Emotion surged up inside him, engulfing his body, a swelling rush going to his head like a rising tide. It was a foreign feeling, something he had no experience with but recognized immediately for what it was. It was the almost god-like feeling of power. Heady and intoxicating, accompanied by the sure knowledge that nothing, for him, was now impossible. His gaze took in the entire city laid out below, and he knew in his soul that it was his for the taking.

“The hell you say, DiCaprio,” he whispered to the night, “I’m the King of the world.”

*****

Dieter Reisbach’s dojo was closed on Sundays, so Tom was able to spend that entire first night exploring the city. With no particular plan in mind, he let himself be drawn to the sky-reaching buildings of the financial district. Their lit windows stood out sharply, the real edges blurred to invisibility, giving the impression that the lights hung unaided in mid-air. The sharp outline of the Transamerica Pyramid beckoned, a misnamed structure that looked more like a needle than an Egyptian tomb. Soon Tom found himself circling the spire, grasping it with one hand, swinging around and around like a child on a playground jungle gym. The narrow sides of the pyramid sloped down sharply to a four foot wide observation deck far below, and Tom felt the urge to slide down its long length, to launch himself laughing into the open air beyond. But at the last moment he remembered that the Pyramid had video cameras mounted there, feeding a panoramic view of the city to public monitors in the lobby below. The chance that someone would be watching in the split second that he flew by was remote, but he decided not to take it anyway.

Instead he found himself circling some of the smaller buildings, ‘smaller’ being an entirely relative term. They loomed over him, cloud scraping towers of glass and metal, and the older buildings whose greater years somehow seemed to make them more solid than the steel and chrome of the younger giants. Each window was a world all in itself, stacked one atop another, magical vignettes of life lit with an eldritch glow. Figures moved in those worlds, people bustling about the unfathomable business of a thousand different lives, more than a few just staring out at the fog dappled San Francisco night. And yet none of them saw him, the incredible flying man who passed within mere yards of those private little worlds, the observer completely unseen. Until he flew too close.

Tom would later nickname the phenomenon ‘the nimbus effect’. Looking out of those lighted windows, he realized, was like looking into a mirror. Once past the glass the light diffused quickly, and only outside objects close enough to reflect that light could be seen from the inside. By staying outside the glow, he was effectively invisible to those within it. To test this theory Tom found an office with one lone occupant, a middle-aged man in a blue suit sans jacket, his collar unbuttoned and his tie loose. The man sat in a high backed leather chair turned to the window, nursing a glass tumbler filled with ice and an amber colored liquid, staring out into the night and lost in his own private thoughts.

For several long minutes Tom hung outside that window, floating, staring into eyes he was almost close enough to see the color of. Nothing, no reaction at all. He raised his arms, waved tentatively at first, then boldly when there was no response. Again, no reaction. Growing more daring, he began to drift forward.

Tom could tell when he was entering the halo of light from the window by looking down at his own body. Like passing through a curtain he was suddenly visible, his body, arms and legs a distinguishable lighter gray than the surrounding night. He glanced up in time to see the man in the widow start, bolting upright in his chair, his eyes popping and his jaw dropping open. Some of his drink spilled in his lap, and when he dropped his gaze in that direction Tom grabbed the opportunity to quickly pull back another twenty feet from the window. The man in the office looked back up, his head scanning right and left, found nothing, and then stood up. When he leaned forward and cupped his hands over his eyes to cut the glare, Tom quickly rose another story, once again safely out of sight. Eventually the man in the window gave up, shaking his head and rubbing the back of his neck. He stretched, set what was left of the drink on his desk, and then walked away. A minute later the lights in the upper floor office winked out.

Yeah, that’s right, guy. You’re tired, you’re seeing things, your mind’s just playing tricks on you. Go home and sleep it off.

And so, it seemed there was more than one kind of invisibility. The cloak of camouflage, black clothes and avoiding the light it night, and light colored clothing and higher altitude during the day. And on the flipside there was the cloak of disbelief. As long as they didn’t get a good look at him, they wouldn’t believe what they did see. They’d pass it off as tired eyes, an optical illusion, or an overactive imagination. Anything that was more likely than a flying man, for chrissakes. So as long as he was fast, he should be okay.

Or maybe if he gave them another explanation? Hmmm, something to think about.

*****

“I don’t believe you! You mean you actually let this guy see you? On purpose? Damn it, Tom, are you trying to end up in a zoo?”

“Mike, will you stop shouting already? Nothing happened, I told you I was careful. I only let him see me for a second, not long enough for him to be sure he even saw me at all. Trust me, he never told anybody, and by now he’s probably forgotten the whole thing anyway.”

“He sees a hooded man all dressed in black floating outside his twenty story window, and you think he’ll just forget it?! The guy must have thought you were the angel of Death. Are you in denial, or just out of your ever loving mind?”

“Mike, if you don’t stop shouting I’m going to hang up and go to bed! I’ve just had the busiest night of my life since Benny was born, and I am too tired to put up with this crap. Besides, if it was you in that office with a drink in your hand, seeing a flying man for the very first time in your life, what would you think it was?”

“I’d— well, I’d…” Mike sighed. “All right, I’d probably put it down to the booze, or think I was imagining things.”

“Ah huh. And would you tell anybody what you thought you saw?”

“Hell, no. Okay, so you’re right. There was probably no harm done. But I still say it was a stupid thing to do.”

“No, Mikey, it wasn’t. And we’ve been over this before. I have to test my limits. It’s important that we know not only what I can do, but also how far I can go. Sooner or later we had to find out how close I can get to people without being seen, and now we know.”

“Yeah, well we could have learned that in the lab. We could have experimented in Murray’s warehouse with all the lights turned off or something. Inside, where it’s safe, and with nobody to report you to the National Enquirer.”

“Yeah, and someday we’d have had to try it in the field anyway. Look, Mike, it’s done. It was an acceptable and necessary risk, and you know it, so get off my back, okay?”

“Alright, alright. It was your call. Just as long as you know I still think it was an idiot stunt to pull. So how was the rest of the night? Did you get to buzz the Golden Gate like you planned?”

“Ha! Even better, bro. I flew underneath and checked out the bottom of the bridge. And then I kicked back and laid down on the underside. Mike, it was fantastic! I could feel hundreds of cars passing on the bridge above me, and all that metal groans and creaks constantly. It felt like the whole damn structure was alive. And I looked ‘up’ at the water, and saw all these boats passing by ‘overhead’. Man, it was so incredible, I can’t wait to go again tonight.” Tom’s mood verged on euphoria at the memory, his grin splitting his face from ear to ear. For a moment he could smell again the scent of sea water and massive amounts of rusting iron, feel the rolling thunder vibrations of the big-rig trucks as they passed directly above him…

“Yeah, it sure sounds like you had yourself a great time. I’m thrilled for you. So was that it? Did anything else happen on your first solo?”

“”Uhmn…no. No, not really. It got late, dawn was coming, and I headed back to the warehouse.”

“Aaahh, no! Tom, you never got away with anything as a kid ‘cause you’re such a lousy liar. Something else happened, I can hear it in your voice. And if you don’t tell me what it was right now, I’m coming down there and I’m tying you to a bed until you do!”

“Okay, okay. Just chill out, Mikey, you’re too young to have a coronary. And it was nothing, really. It’s just that, on my way back to the warehouse I got, well, kind of lost.”

“Lost.”

“Yeah.”

“You got lost.”

“That’s right.”

“Flying around over a city with almost a million people, the sun about to come up like a big yellow spotlight, and you got ‘kind of lost’.”

“Mike, we’ve already covered this ground. You think maybe you want to move on to something else?”

“No! How the hell did you get lost in a situation like that? Wasn’t the view good enough for you?!”

“Calm down, Mike! And no, the view sucked. I hadn’t noticed the morning fog coming in. By the time I headed back, I could barely make out some of the streets. I was able to guess where the Mission district was, but that was about it.”

“So what’d you do? Ask a seagull for directions?”

“Ha ha. Your wit and sarcasm are so cutting and original. No, you jerk, I didn’t ask anybody for directions. I just found myself an empty alley and landed, and then I took off the hood and gloves and walked the rest of the way. Turns out I was less than three blocks from the warehouse anyhow. No harm done, alright?”

“This time. But what happens the next time you can’t find your way home, and maybe can’t find a conveniently empty alley, either?”

“I already got that covered. After I got up this afternoon, I went back to that sporting goods store where I got the hunting mask, and I got one of those Geo-Positioned Satellite locators. Now I can find my way anywhere in the world, even if I can’t see the ground.”

“Yeah? And just how accurate are those things?

“Within about nine feet. Believe me, I don’t need any more accurate than that. You can also download the local area maps, so you can see exactly where you are. And you can program in up to ten different sites as benchmarks, so when I need to get back to the warehouse I just press a button and follow the arrow. So don’t worry, I won’t get lost again.”

Mike snorted. “Huh. Famous last words. Alright, so maybe you do have that covered now. But that’s the kind of thing we should have figured out before you left home. I can’t help wondering what else we might not have thought of.”

“Don’t go into shock, but this time I agree with you. I’m fully aware that I’m playing this whole flying thing by ear, and I know it’s the things I don’t think about that’ll turn around and bite me in the ass. Believe me, bro, I’m being careful. I’m not going off half cocked, and I’ll try to anticipate any problems well before they happen. Alright?”

“Yeah, I guess so. And if it wasn’t okay with me, you’d still do it anyway, right?”

“Ah, you know me so well. But hey, don’t worry. I promise I’ll be careful. But now I’ve gotta go, I’ve got to be at the dojo by eight. I’ll call you tomorrow with another update.”

“Yeah. Talk to ya tomorrow, Tom.”

*****

It was 8:30, and the fog was just beginning to creep in from the bay. Ghostly gray fingers of it reached tentatively through the shadows, working their way through the chinks and crevasses of the burnt out high school. A cold wet tendril of the stuff licked at his throat, caressing his flesh like the kiss of some long dead thing from the bottom of the sea.

Oh Christ, Blackwood, can you possibly get any more morbid?

Tom shook his head and moved, shifting his position behind the soot-stained parapet. He’d been sitting there on a scrap of scavenged cardboard for almost an hour now, his legs were feeling cramped, and his buttocks were cold and numb. He lay the cheap plastic binoculars on the ground and stretched, lowered his weight to a bare twenty pounds and grunted with relief at the returning circulation. He rolled onto his side and stretched his legs, careful not to skyline himself to the parking lot below.

Dieter Reisbach and his daughter would be coming out soon. They would get into the solitary car still parked in the lot, and they would drive to their apartment on Portrero Hill, just as they had done for the past three nights. And just as he had done for those three nights Tom would follow them, high overhead and unseen, until they reached the safety of the guarded and gated community. And then, once his charges were safely inside, he would be free to have some fun over the rooftops of San Francisco.

It was Friday evening, four days now since that first time when Tom had flown high above the glittering lights of the city. The initial excitement had cooled, blunted by the confidence that only comes with experience, and with it also came a strong sense of embarrassment. With the hindsight of time passed Tom could see that his brother had been right, that the exhilaration of that first night had been literally intoxicating, and that he really had taken some bone-headed chances. Not just showing himself to the man in the window, for Tom was still confident that he had been dismissed and forgotten. But also in the way he had flown through the city like it was a giant carnival ride, whooping and hollering as if it was his own personal roller coaster. With a sense of guilt he had refrained from telling Mike about his wild antics that night, and had anxiously scanned all the newspapers and TV reports of the last few days, but apparently his carousing had gone unnoticed. As a result, although his excursions of the next three nights had still been exhilarating, they had also been a good deal more sober.

Tom had not wasted the daylight hours just sleeping, either. He had spent much of the last three days playing tourist, exploring at ground level the areas of San Francisco he had already seen from the air. He rode the cable cars, strolled Fisherman’s Wharf, and ate pot stuffers and fried rice from a vendor in China town. He drove down the tortuous turns of Lombard Street, rented a bicycle and toured Golden Gate Park, fed animals at the zoo and took the ferry tour to Alcatraz. He did all the things thousands of tourists do every day in San Francisco, but he did not see the same things as they saw. Tom saw landing sites and approach paths, hiding places and observation posts. He saw dark corners and parking lots where he could land unseen, or takeoff without causing a religious hysteria. He saw the city not as a tourist seeking experience, but almost as a scout mapping a route for a future invasion.

The military simile felt particularly apt, in light of the clothing he now wore on his nightly excursions. A visit to an Army surplus store had replaced the Nikes and denims with lace up jump boots and black cargo pants. The extra large pockets of the pants now held his new GPS navigator and a cell phone, and also a rolled up nylon windbreaker for his ‘incognito’ trips to the ground. He still wore the black long-sleeved shirt and the canvas hunting mask, but had added a sleeveless hoody sweatshirt in deference to the cold night skies of San Francisco. The heavy leather work gloves he had replaced with a pair of tight fitting batter’s gloves, their soft leather palms so like a second skin he could literally pick up a pin with one. It was a completely practical outfit, but thinking about it still made Tom smile. He thought he looked cool as hell.

*****

Dieter Reisbach had gotten a great deal on the building that currently housed his dojo. Originally it had been the gymnasium of a junior high school that had burned down over a year ago, leaving the three story structure a blackened and unstable husk that would fall to the wrecking ball whenever the funds where available. The gym had survived only because it was a detached building, the old two story brick and stucco structure looking like a phoenix newly risen from the destruction of it’s parent, totally untouched by the devastation. The funds strapped school board had been more than happy to rent the place to Dieter, and had even persuaded the utility companies to extend him the same rates as the publicly funded school had enjoyed before the fire. A useless piece of property had now become a source of income, and the community itself was enriched by the presence of a new school. It was one of those rare deals were both sides were happy, and thus the San Francisco branch of the Reisbach School of Martial Arts had found its home.

Dieter was tall and rangy, tanned and fit, with short cut hair that was so blond you could barely see where it had turned white. Somewhere on the wrong side of fifty he was a handsome man, with a face creased with lines that spoke of both great experience and deep emotions. He walked with a cane, his leg stiff from the knee splint under his sweat suit, but still he carried his half of the heavy equipment bag with little difficulty.

At the other end of the bag was his daughter Holly, who only seemed small next to her tall father. She topped the scales at 5’10’’, with short honey blonde hair, unlike the near platinum locks of her father, but just as fit and tan as he was. Whereas Dieter moved with the studied confidence of a knife blade, Holly’s youth showed through, her movements reflecting the near boundless energy of a twenty-five year old athlete. Her face was model beautiful, with a pixy cuteness that probably still caused her to be carded in bars. And yet her voice was as throaty as a NASCAR engine as it echoed across the empty parking lot.

As she had on the previous nights, she wore tight fitting sweatpants and a midriff baring tank top, which showed a fair amount of skin over a body builders stomach. As he had done for the last three nights Tom felt a slight touch of guilt as he watched her through the cheap plastic binoculars. It made him feel like some pervert in a raincoat, spying on unsuspecting young women from the cover of a dark alley. He salved his conscious by remembering that it was all just a part of the job that Pablo had sent him out on, and against his will at that. It’s a dirty job, Murray, but someone has to do it.

Tom grinned. Not exactly a virtuous thought, but it did shut up the pesky little voice in the back of his head.

The Reisbachs got to the station wagon and stopped at the back, while Dieter fumbled with the keys. He had to hang the cane from his arm and balance on his good leg to do it, but eventually he got the rear hatch opened, and then he and Holly slung the heavy equipment bag in and closed it back up. When Dieter was once more leaning on his cane, he gave the keys to Holly and waited while she went to lock up the back door of the dojo and set the alarm.

She was on her way back when Tom heard the motorcycles.

*****

Dieter froze when he heard the mechanical roaring approach, his right hand still holding the crooked handle of the cane he leaned against. He grabbed the cane in both hands as he awkwardly spun on his bad leg, scanning the brightly lit parking lot of the burned out school. The lot that had been empty seconds ago now echoed madly, violence appearing as if from nowhere on the backs of a dozen black motorcycles. Chrome and leather gleamed menacingly under the harsh actinic glare of the lights, and with a sick feeling he recognized the dull blue shine of guns already leveled in his direction.

Belatedly Dieter thought about his daughter. He turned to shout to her, to tell her to stay inside the gymn and call the police, but it was too late. Holly was already out the door and almost to the wagon, fear for her father’s safety marring her beautiful face. In what was obviously a pre-planned move two bikers had already pulled up between her and the building. They sat there on their growling metal machines, grinning at her, one of them negligently pointing a sawed off shotgun directly at her belly. Dieter swallowed, and for the first time since leaving Germany he felt the iciness of true fear clench at his bowels.

The chrome metal monsters roared around and around the parking lot, their riders revving engines and whooping at each other like demonic school children at recess.