Book II Chapter 3

It would be another month before the entire Planning Committee would gather together again. It happened in Sacramento, at Murray’s workshop at the west end of the city, the day after Tom’s son Benny had caught a flight back to L.A. to live with his mother and attend his new school. Tom had to come up to meet with the two kids he had hired to run his online comic book business, and Dieter and Holly had used the occasion to visit with their attorney regarding the new dojo.

The group gathered in the little meeting area in the center of the old factory. Food had been provided, along with copious amounts of beer, and now the members of the group were lounging around and playing catch up. Murray had added another chair to the tiny conference area that had been formed around his desk; surprisingly enough one that didn’t look like it came from a garage sale. It was an expensive leather club chair with a matching footstool, which he had gotten two weeks earlier. Tom still couldn’t resist grinning as he remembered the day he and Mike had first seen it.

He and his brother had arrived one morning at the workshop after dropping Benny off for a play date with Mike’s daughters, Desiree and Tyler. As much as he had planned to, Tom had found it impossible to put his life entirely on hold and spend every second of their four weeks together with his son. For one thing Benny wouldn’t have stood for it. Seven year-old boys needed the company of kids their own age, and so despite his resolve not to engage in any more ‘hero work’ while his son was there, Tom often found himself with enough time on his hands to occasionally check up on the rest of the Planning Committee. Which was how he and Mike had ended up at Pablo Murray’s workshop one morning, where they had seen the new leather chair sitting in the corner across from Murray’s desk.

The chair was big and solid, with plush leather cushions and a high back with wings. It looked like something out of Masterpiece Theatre, as if Alistair Cook should be sitting in it, warming a snifter of brandy in front of a fire at his favorite gentlemen’s club. It looked expensive but comfortable, and Tom’s stomach went on alert when he thought he recognized it.

The little special effects wizard was ensconced in front of his computer, furiously banging away at the keys, and had barely grunted an acknowledgement when the two brothers had entered. But his head came up and he scowled when Mike Blackwood plopped his long, lanky form into the leather seat, calling out “Dibs!” as he did so.

“Get your skinny ass the hell out of there, you bug-eyed geek! That chair is mine, comprende? No one sits in it but me.”

Mike grinned back at the smaller man, but made no effort to move from the stuffed leather cushions. Instead he wriggled himself more comfortably into their depths, pretending to ignore Pablo while he continued talking to his brother. “Man, check it out, Tom! Real leather. Looks like the little guy is finally fixing this dump up. Oooh, this is nice! Frankly, I think he ought to get chairs like this for all of us. What do you think, bro?”

Tom rolled his eyes. He was pretty sure now that he knew where this was going. “I think you’d better do what Pablo says, and get your butt out of that chair. Didn’t you ever see The Library Murders?”

Mike snorted in contempt. “What, you think Grumpy over there is gonna kill me or something? He hasn’t got the guts.”

“Don’t push me, you Mick Jagger wannabe,” Murray growled. “Now get outta my chair, and stay out of it, or you’ll be sorry.” Pablo’s words may have been angry, but his voice was way too calm, as if he were reciting them from a prepared script. Tom thought he noticed a deceptive air about the little man when he said that.

But his threat only caused Mike to grin wider, as he insolently plopped his feet onto the footstool and crossed his ankles. “Make me, half pint,” he said, mockingly. Tom shook his head and hastily stepped back.

Murray eyed Mike coolly for several seconds, then turned back to his keyboard and quickly typed in a short string of commands, before striking the Enter key with a dramatic flourish.

Flashing, snapping blue sparks of electricity coruscated over Mike’s body, as he yelped and tried to scramble out of the leather chair. Elongated ribbons of miniature lightning trailed from his fingertips to the brass tacks on the chair arms as he struggled to his feet, his long, dirty blonde hair springing out from his head in all directions…

“Oh my GOD… are you saying he wired that chair and tried to electrocute Mike? Uncle Pablo!” Holly Reisbach exclaimed, her hands going to her mouth, her expression doing a dance somewhere between shock and merriment. “Mike, are you alright?” she asked.

“Hell, no!” the lanky man in the Pink Floyd T-shirt growled from across the room. On the couch that was farthest from the offending chair, she now noticed. “That sawed-off little freak tried to barbecue me!”

“It would have served you right if I did,” Murray retorted, from his seat at his computer. Not surprisingly, the special affects master had never used the chair that he had been so loudly territorial about. The two middle-aged men started to trade insults and squabble, their bickering reminiscent of a pair of children who fight all day just for the sake of making noise.

“Like trying to ride herd on a couple of ten year olds,” Tom muttered, shaking his head. “Look, Mike wasn’t hurt, no matter what he says. Maybe just his pride. That chair is one of Pablo’s first professional special effects projects; he built it for a movie almost twenty years ago. Nobody knows how he did it, but he somehow managed to build a Tesla coil into the damned thing.”

Holly scrunched up her eyes in puzzlement, something that Tom thought made her look cute as hell. “What’s a Tes…Tesser…”

“Tesla coil. Invented by Nicolai Tesla about a hundred some years ago. Basically you just run about a jillion volts through it without any current, and the electricity flows over your skin instead of through your body. You get these mad-scientist sparks shooting out of your hands, and sometimes your hair stands on end, but it doesn’t hurt. It just scares the hell out of you if you’re not prepared for it.”

Holly covered her mouth but was unable to keep her giggles from escaping. “Oh, that must have been so funny! But why did he do it? It sounds like he was setting Mike up just for that.”

“Beats the heck out of me. They’ve been going at each other like that for weeks, now. Arguing like kids, and pulling these stupid, petty little pranks. I’ve seen Mike at his worst, and I know just how long he can carry a grudge, but this is ridiculous even for him. What do you think, Dieter?”

The tall German was sitting on the couch next to theirs, and when Tom and his daughter turned their attention his way, he couldn’t help but chuckle. Oh, the stories he could tell!

“I’m afraid I can’t say the same about Pablo, Tom. In the industry, he’s famous for his practical jokes. And for how long he holds a grudge. Producers, directors, actors, some of the biggest names in Hollywood have learned that it is better not to get him angry at you. Perhaps it is all this inactivity, and they are merely bored. I think it is merely a matter of waiting until they both tire of the sport, and stop their sniping at each other.”

“Yeah, great idea,” Tom answered wryly, his mouth twisting as he glanced back at Pablo’s desk. His brother and the short man were now huddled over the keyboard of Murray’s computer, arguing over something on the monitor. Half muttered insults filled the air like gnats at a picnic. “The only problem is staying out of the crossfire until they do.”

“Ah! It sounds as if you have already been dragged into their little war,” Dieter commented, a merry sparkle in his eye.

“Yeah, and I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Yes, but you will, won’t you?” Holly said, sweetly. She leaned against him as she did, batting her eyes. Tom could feel the softness of her breast pressing against the side of his bicep, felt her warmth through the thin cotton of her shirt. He could smell the fruity sweetness of her shampoo. He sighed, knowing when he was outgunned.

“Okay, this happened three days ago. Ever since that fire at the Copely House, where I had to carry that kid to safety, the three of us have been working on something. That little boy couldn’t have weighed more than forty pounds, but the inertia we built up whenever I had to make a course change almost threw him right out of my arms a couple of times. If he had been even ten pounds heavier I’m not at all sure that I could have held on to him, not with some of the maneuvers we were doing. So what we’ve been trying to do is find some sort of system that would allow me to carry passengers safely.

“Mike and I came up with something similar to a skydiver’s buddy-harness, the kind they wear when they take an inexperienced diver out on his first drop. Mike doesn’t like high places, so he’s had absolutely no desire to take a ride with me. But Pablo has always dreamed of flying, so we knew he’d want to be the first one to try it out. We didn’t tell him about the harness, just that we had something to show him and would be over that night. I figured it would be a great surprise.”

Tom shook his head and snorted at his own naivety. “But Mike showed up an hour early. With two full bags of fish tacos.”

“Oh, no!” Holly gasped, her eyes going wide. On the other couch, her father began to laugh as Tom continued.

“Exactly. You know how Pablo loves those things. By the time I got there he’d eaten a whole bag all by himself. And then lost it at about two thousand feet, most of it on me! We dropped back down, and Mikey was rolling on the floor, laughing his socks off. We would have killed him right then and there, but Pablo was too sick, and I had an urgent need for a shower.”

Holly was laughing outright now at the sour expression on his face, and even her usually taciturn father was shaking his head and chuckling. Tommy frowned, but then shrugged. Considering what he was into these days, if getting puked on and laughed at was the worst thing to happen to him, he could count his blessings. Besides, he could take comfort in the fact that Mike was going to get his, too.

Holly finally stopped laughing, and by way of apology she snuggled up close to him, her long, lean body molding against his in that way only women and cats seem to have. Tom started to grin, then stopped himself as he glanced over at Holly’s father. He was gratified to see that the big, hard man wasn’t glaring daggers at him. It seemed that Dieter had finally come to accept the relationship between Tom and his daughter.

“Say, did I ever tell you that Benny is one of the sweetest little boys I’ve ever met? Not to mention one of the cutest?” Holly interrupted his thoughts.

“Not once in the past hour, no, but you’ve said it plenty over the last month. Honey, I want to thank you for all the time you spent with my son while he was here. It means a lot to me that the two of you get along so well. And by the way, I think you’re going to be his first major crush.”

Holly smiled, and seemed to melt a little bit more against him.

“It was mutual, Tom. That little man is already a heartbreaker. I’m glad, and a whole lot relieved that he likes me, too.”

“What, you were nervous about meeting him?”

She laughed. “Are you kidding? You can stand up to your ex-wife, and you can stand up to my father, but you’re too good a parent to choose me over your own son. If Benny hadn’t of liked me, you and I would never of had a chance. And you know,” she said softly, tracing the line of his jaw with the tip of one finger. “I wouldn’t be nearly as crazy about you if you weren’t built that way.”

She leaned in and kissed him, her mouth on his so tender, and yet so hungry. He had learned early on that beneath all the playfulness and energy she wore like clothing, there ran a deep well of real passion. He had glimpsed it many times now since they had been dating, usually stolen kisses on the couch back in the San Francisco loft, while Benny slept in the other room. But that was as far as they had dared go, and now that the seven-year-old was back home in Los Angeles they were both keenly aware of where this relationship was heading.

So aware, in fact, that they sometimes forgot everything else.

“Ah-¬huhmm!” Dieter cleared his throat, and when Tom came up for air, blinking, the tall German pointedly indicated his watch.

“Tom, if we want to get back to San Francisco before dark, we’ll have to leave in a little less than two hours. We should start this meeting, ya?”

“Uh, ya, I mean, right,” Tom said, climbing to his feet. He felt his face start to redden, but Holly snickered at him, completely unembarrassed at having their impromptu petting session interrupted by her father. Tom hastily turned away and stepped to the center of the room. Across from him at Murray’s desk, he and Mike seemed to be having a shoving match over who got control of the keyboard.

“HEY!” Tom shouted, loud enough to capture everyone’s attention. “Do I have to separate you two? Now listen up, it’s time we got this meeting started.”

His words may have been serious, but inside Tom felt an eagerness ready to burst forth. They had needed this break, he knew, all of them had. But it felt damned good to get back to work.

Hero work.

*****

Tom slipped silently through the night skies, wisps of vapor from the low lying clouds streaming past his body, glowing in the full moonlight like shades of ghostly life with half glimpsed faces. Two thousand feet below the city lights formed their complex patterns, lines for streets and the square blocks that were homes and buildings. It was barely nine o’clock and the traffic was still vigorous, moving through the thousand and one roadways like the flow of blood through the veins of a living, breathing beast. The air was chill with the end of summer and the beginning of fall, but the bullet-resistant cloth of his black outfit kept him warm enough.

Mike and Pablo had done a great job of repairing the suit, Tom thought, as he did a slow barrel roll to port. The pack over his shoulder shifted awkwardly, its mass outside the influence of the gravity field around his body. Automatically, he compensated.

After the rescue at the Copely House, the black outfit had been a mess. It had reeked of smoke and soot, and had been speckled with tiny holes from the cinders that had showered down on him inside the burning high-rise. Not only had the two techies gotten rid of the stench and patched up the multitude of tiny little burns, but they had also taken the time to incorporate some new improvements into the whole.

One such improvement had been an obvious need after Tom’s loss of power during the fire; a way had to be found to prevent that from ever happening again. It had been Pablo Murray’s idea to incorporate two small canisters of carbon dioxide into the body of the aero-hump over Tom’s back. Just as in a CO2 fire extinguisher, the gas had been compressed to the point of becoming a liquid. When released it reverted back to a gas that would be channeled down the length of Tom’s spine, so cold that it could cause ice to form if left on for too long. Like all of the gadgets built into Tom’s outfit, the mini fire extinguishers could be triggered manually from a switch on the chest-crossing bandoleer, or controlled remotely through the linkup with Murray’s computer.

Although Tom was not sure yet if he would call it an improvement, another change had been to his primary weapon. The wooden cane that he had carried since the day he had saved Holly and Dieter was gone, lost amidst the burned-out rubble of the Copely House. Although another could have been gotten easily enough, Dieter had suggested instead that Tom try a pair of collapsible batons. The two metal, telescoping rods popular with both police and security guards held a spring inside, and at a flick of a button they suddenly expanded from ten inches to twenty six in length. Dieter’s exhibition of a stick fighting art called ‘Escrima’ was impressive enough, but what really convinced Tom to make the change had been the memory from the night of the fire. Himself, banging uselessly away with his cane at the safety glass door of that burning apartment building, and of how close he had come to failing. One of these heavy metal batons could have made all the difference.

“So how’s the suit feel, Flyboy?” Murray’s voice made a tinny sound through the earphone sewn into his mask. The matching microphone allowed him to answer his friend over a hundred miles away in Sacramento.

“Great. You got the smell out, and it even fits better.”

“That’s ‘cause we had to take it in so much. You’ve lost a lot of weight off that lard ass of yours.”

Tom grinned. As far as compliments went, this one was pretty left handed. But with Murray you took what you could get.

“Thanks, I think. Holly kept me on a pretty strict workout schedule while Benny was here. And you know what Dieter’s training routine is like. Hell, right now I’m in better shape than I was in the service.”

“And you’re gonna need it, Flyboy. Strangely enough, nobody was shooting at you when you were in the Army. And speaking of the big bad Kraut, I think you’d better start practicing all that radio discipline he talked about. It does make sense. I mean, we’ve got a damned decent encryption on the internet connection, and the scrambler we set up for the wireless part is top notch. But technology gets old fast, and if anybody ever does break our security, code names might be the only thing that saves our collective butts.”

“Yeah, I know,” Tom answered, sighing. And he did agree with Pablo and Dieter about the need for better security. The more people involved with their insane little enterprise, the more headaches he had, thinking about what could happen to them if his abilities were ever found out. Especially by the wrong people, which was just about anybody with too much power and too little conscious. But he still felt like an idiot using those stupid code names! The nicknames Pablo had given him and Mike had stuck, Flyboy and Rockstar, and they had in turn christened him the Tinker. But Dieter had gone with Beowulf, or just Wulf for short, and Holly had insisted on Mata Hari for hers. Tom realized that his discomfort about using the code names stemmed from the fact that each one was way too close to the true nature of its holder.

“Alright, Flyboy, your target is coming up straight ahead.” Suddenly the ghostly image of the heads-up screen appeared in the left lens of Tom’s goggles. The contoured GPS map displayed there showed both the blinking cursor that was his current position, and the stick-figure outlines of the buildings he was passing over. Ahead of him, the image of the structure that was his destination glowed with a brighter neon light, then began to pulse of and on when he was directly over it.

Tom hovered, high in the night sky, and then slowly began to drop downward. He stopped his descent just in front of his target, a tall and expensive looking apartment building, a more modern and not quite as upscale version of the Copely House. There he floated, immobile and unseen, his position safely outside the nimbus of light coming from the many windows of the building.

“Okay, Tinker, I’m in position. Which one is it?”

“Third floor down, second apartment from the left. That’s it. Now open the lens array, and I’ll see if I can get us a picture.”

Tom slid the armored cover off the array on his bandoleer, another new innovation of Murray’s. Since the steadiest place to mount the array was at the center of Tom’s chest, Pablo had at first been forced to use extremely short lensed cameras that proved to have unacceptably weak performance. The definition had been lousy, and the telescopic lens could magnify only a mere 10X. Pablo’s answer to this had been to replace the tiny cameras with longer, more powerful ones, and to lay them lengthwise. He had then attached them to a double prism lens, similar to the ones used in marine sextants, that could bend the incoming light a full ninety degrees. The specialty cameras then sent the image to the onboard computer and transmitter on the back of the bandoleer, and from there it split to both Tommy’s goggles and the receiving station back at the loft. Instead of being open and exposed, protected only by a piece of heavy canvas held closed by a strip of Velcro, the delicate, state of the art lenses now lay behind a quarter inch piece of Plexiglas, with a Kevlar cover that slid over them. The array still contained the original three specialty cameras; telescopic, infra red, and thermal imaging. The whole package was incredibly thin, less than three inches in thickness.

The small, low light pinhole camera in the center of the goggles had been updated, too. It was now the next generation of Sony’s ExView SuperHad technology, not yet available to the general public, but Murray had used his connections in the movie industry to get several of them before they came to market. The new camera could still function with a mere .0003 lumes of light, but the resolution had gone up from a measly 600 lines of resolution to a staggering 1,200 lines.

Also, by widening the projected display and adding a larger electrochromic shield, the entire right lens of Tom’s goggles could now become a completely self contained viewing screen. The new technology provided sharper, clearer, color images in normal light, and a low light display that allowed Tom to see in pitch darkness as if it were an overcast day. As Mike had put it, you could use the camera to read the fine print on a government contract, in the bottom of a well at midnight.

As he hovered outside of the indicated apartment, he used the manual controls to turn on the full sized display on his right lens. One by one he flipped through the cameras that gave him so many options, trying to find out just what was inside the apartment before he committed himself.

*****

Samuel Dray eased out of the bedroom, softly closing the door behind, careful not to waken the two people asleep inside. He moved down the hallway on silent feet, going from room to room, turning off the lights and checking that the door was locked and the alarm was set. His usual nightly routine, one he had performed for years. Recently, though, he had added another step to the self imposed habit. Now he conscientiously checked for the telltale red lights, to show that the smoke alarms were still working.

In the large living room he stopped, looking down at the plastic figure at his feet, then bent over and picked up one of Jordan’s action figures. He smiled, inspecting the brightly colored image of a Jedi Knight, or maybe someone else, he really couldn’t say. Sam had never been particularly interested in that kind of thing when he was a kid. And he couldn’t understand Jordan’s sudden fascination with the whole superhero genre, either. But like everything his son did these days, it brought a warm glow to his heart, just as it tickled the hell out of him, too.

He put the tiny figure into the pocket of his bathrobe and headed towards the kitchen. Meg and Jordan were sound asleep, which made this a perfect time for a late night Scotch. A small one, to be sure, but even so it would help him sleep. This past month had been emotionally exhausting…

Sam’s thoughts were interrupted by the chirping of the kitchen phone. Hastily he reached for it, mindful of his wife and son asleep in their room, and the extension on the nightstand. He sighed as he picked it up, knowing a call this late had to be a medical emergency at the clinic. He’d probably have to get dressed and go down there tonight, dammit. Well, at least it came before he could drink that Scotch.

“Hello?” he asked, speaking into the phone. This late it was probably Rosie, she’d be the charge nurse on duty tonight. But to his surprise a man’s voice answered.

“Dr. Samuel Dray?”

“Speaking.”

“Are you Jordan’s father?”

Sam stood straight, feeling something atavistic clench in his chest. A parent’s instinctive response, to something unknown involving his child. “Who is this?”

“Do you still have questions about what happened at the Copely House fire? If you do, the answers are out on your balcony.” The clipped words ended when the call disconnected, and Sam found himself staring at the phone in his hand. Listening to the discordant sound of the dial tone. He slowly hung the receiver back up, feeling his mind go temporarily numb.

The Copely House fire. The night that he and Meg had lost everything, and then gotten it all back by the grace of a miracle. That’s what Meg had called it, a miracle, a gift from God. She hadn’t wanted to question it. Perhaps she felt that if they did look at it too closely, then God or whoever else might take it all away again.

Well, Meg was Catholic, after all.

But Samuel Dray did not have the comfort of his wife’s faith. The scientist in him could not allow him to blindly accept the miraculous, even when it happened to him and his family. He had seen some incredible things as a doctor, many of them on his own operating table. There was really no explanation for those kinds of miracles, and yet he questioned them anyway. Just as he questioned the miracle of how his four year old son had escaped from a certain, fiery death.

Sam had never really expected an answer to those questions. Was he actually going to get one?

With a sudden decisiveness he turned from the kitchen and strode back through the living room, stopping at the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony. He flipped a wall switch, and immediately the darkened patio outside sprang into light. A much smaller one than their old place, but then this apartment was only supposed to be temporary, anyway. He and Meg had both decided that they wouldn’t stand apartment living anymore. Just as soon as they could find a house close enough to the clinic, with a decent sized backyard for Jordan…

Sam shook his head, clearing it of all the stray thoughts. A mysterious late night call telling him to check out his patio should have made him wary, but for some reason it had not. He wondered at that, even as he opened the patio doors and stepped outside.

At first he didn’t see, his eye had simply wandered past it dismissively. But then something registered in the right portion of his brain, and he found himself staring at what was sitting on the patio chair, mesmerized at how out of place it all was here, in this setting. And yet how familiar.

Two bath towels, neatly folded. A pair of blue and red Spiderman pajamas, also folded. And a small, pathetically worn and tattered little Teddy Bear.

Samuel Dray stared, feeling a lightness come suddenly to his head. “Bubba?” he spoke, hesitantly.

“I take it Bubba is the name of the bear?”

Sam jerked, and then spun, staring at the figure sitting comfortably on the metal rail on the right hand side of the balcony. It perched there casually, one leg bent and resting on the rail, completely unmindful of the six story drop at its back. Sam stood there gaping, trying to take in the bizarrely dressed apparition before him. It was an image he had first seen two days earlier.

“I’m sorry if I startled you, Doctor. But frankly, I couldn’t think of any other way to introduce myself that wouldn’t be a shock. So I went for privacy, instead.” Unsurprisingly, the voice that answered was the same as the one on the phone.

“You— you’re the Fire Man!” Sam managed to gasp out. The man in the black costume cocked his head, then slid off the railing and stood, making no attempt to come closer. He was tall, and his shoulders were broad, and though he made no move there was something about the way he stood that spoke of effortless power barely contained.

“I see Jordan wasn’t able to keep me a secret after all. Well, I guess you can’t expect much self control from a four-year-old. I just hope he hasn’t told anybody else about me?” The voice that came from the apparition was soft but clear, and only slightly muffled by the mask over its face. Sam didn’t miss the question in the last sentence.

“Umm, no. No, he didn’t, not really. He told every one that he was saved by the fireman. We all thought he meant one of the firefighters, but a few days ago Meg found a picture he drew. Crayons, you know? It was a picture of a man dressed all in black with a hood, and big bug eyes. When she asked him who it was, he said it was the Fire Man. We thought it must be one of the characters from his comic books.”

The other man chuckled, a sound Sam found reassuring. At least his visitor had a sense of humor. He shook his head, still trying to wrap it around the strange turn of events.

“It was you, wasn’t it? You’re the one who saved our son.”

The man in black didn’t say anything, but after a moment he gave the tiniest nod of his head.

“I… thank you. There’s nothing more I can say, and it’s not nearly enough. But thank you. If there’s anything I can ever do for you…” His voice trailed off, uncertainly. What could he possibly do to repay this man? Surprisingly, his unvoiced question got an answer.

“There might be something you can do for me, Doctor. Not now, maybe not ever, if I’m lucky. But someday I might need your help. Your medical help.”

Sam blinked. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Look, did Jordan ever tell you how he got out of that building?”

“Umm… he said that the Fire Man saved him. And… and he said--”

Sam’s words came to a grinding halt, as he stared at the man in the black costume, remembering what else Jordan had said. Suddenly he looked away, out over the balcony and into the night. Six floors up…

For an instant, Sam became very much aware of the action figure in the pocket of his bathrobe. Before he could talk, before he could really think, the Fire Man continued their halted conversation.

“Look. Basically what I do is, I help people. I can do things other people can’t. And sometimes, like at the Copely House, those things can be dangerous and I can get hurt. And when that happens it’s not possible for me to go to a regular practitioner. It would help if I had someone I trust who I could go to, someone who won’t be keeping records or reporting my treatment.”

“What, uh, what sort of treatment are we talking about?” Sam asked, although he was beginning to get a glimmer of the answer. His heart beat loudly beneath his pajamas and bathrobe. He was starting to feel very strange, as if he were floating, not quite anchored to reality. So strange.

“Could be anything, Doc. Burns, bites, broken bones. Bullet wounds. Sometimes, things get pretty rough in my business.”

Sam took a deep breath, turning away form his guest, trying to pull his tattered thoughts together. Major alarm bells were going off. This man was actually asking him if he would treat him for bullet wounds, and then not report it to the police. One of the most sure fire ways for any practicing physician to lose his medical license, and even the possibility of going to jail. He was asking him to risk his career, his reputation. All gone, just to help a complete stranger whose mysterious purpose he couldn’t even guess.

A stranger who had saved his son.

And was this guy actually claiming that he could fly?

Sam turned back to the dark apparition, a new determination in his eyes. “You’re asking a lot, but I noticed something. You’d also be risking a lot more. I could always turn you over to the police, to cover myself. You don’t know me at all, why would you be willing to risk so much on my word alone?”

“Oh, I know you, Doc. I know you a lot better than you think. Doctor Samuel L. Dray, age forty four. Heart surgeon, graduated second in his class at Stanford Medical School. Spent his residency at one of the biggest surgical hospitals in Los Angeles, but then turned around and did two years in the Trauma Center of a hospital in South Central L.A. You must have had better offers than that, so I can only presume that you’re basically idealistic.

“Your career got fast-tracked into heart surgery when you pioneered a new surgical technique, the first of four that now bear your name. You’re now considered one of the top chest surgeons on the west coast. You’ve patented an artificial heart valve, and a new design of surgical retractor, both of which have made you very rich, over and above your regular income and family money. That makes you smart.

“You opened your own clinic, and get heart patients form all over the country. But your facility also does fifteen percent more charity and pro bono work than any other treatment center in San Francisco. And you volunteer at a free clinic in the Haight district twice a week. That makes you compassionate.

“So, yeah, I do know you, Doc. Your record speaks for itself.”

Sam felt his eyebrows rise. “It appears you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to find out so much about me,” he said, dryly.

“Not really. There’ve been several articles written about you, and I have Internet access. It only took about fifteen minutes.”

He frowned, more than a little disturbed at how much of his life was an open book. Especially considering how little he knew of this man. He thought about what his visitor had proposed, the things that he had hinted at, and felt a nervous energy suddenly grow inside of him. He turned away, feeling the urge to pace, like a caged animal in a zoo. But even if the balcony wasn’t so small, he would have resisted the desire. Samuel Dray was not one to indulge his impulses.

“Look, it’s not that I’m not grateful. For God’s sake, you saved my son. But you’re standing there in that bizarre costume, and asking me to believe a lot of incredible things. That you’re some kind of… Oh, sweet Jesus, I can’t even say the words! Like something out of Jordan’s comic books. It’s too much.”

The man in the costume shook his head and took a step forward. Sam felt his stomach tense, suddenly unsure, but still he held his ground.

“You’ve got that wrong, Doctor. I haven’t asked you to believe anything. I’ve told you that I was the one who saved your son’s life, and the proof is sitting there in that chair. You offered to repay me, and I told you that someday I may need your help, but I also acknowledged that it might be potentially dangerous. If that’s too much for you than just say so, and you’ll never see me again. The only thing that I’ll ask is that you keep this meeting a secret, that’s all.”

“But the police already know about you,” Sam blurted. He hadn’t intended to say the words, but somehow they had just slipped out, as if escaping on their own. He saw the costumed man stiffen.

“Could you please explain that last remark, Doc?” he asked, quietly. But there was a palpable tension in his words, and Sam hurried to explain.

“Two days ago, we had a visit from a police officer, a plain clothes detective. She wanted to know about that night at the Copley House, and to question Jordan about it. She showed him a picture, this artist’s sketch that looked a lot like you. Jordan got upset and wouldn’t look at it, and when he started to cry my wife asked the detective to leave. We... we never told her about Jordan’s drawing of you.”

The man in the costume was rubbing the back of his neck, a movement that seemed more sadly resigned than irritated or alarmed.

“Doc, this detective. Was she Chinese, by any chance?”

“Well, yes, she was. Inspector Wu. Do you know her?”

“Oh, yeah, I know her. I met Molly awhile back and asked her not to talk about me, either.

“Look, this changes everything. If the cops are looking into it, it’s even more dangerous for you. I won’t ask you to risk this. Just give Jordan his bear back, and we’ll call it even. Goodnight, Doctor.”

“I’ll do it. I’ll help you.”

There was a sudden silence on the balcony, and it was a toss up as to who was the most surprised. Sam could only wonder at what he had just done. Just minutes ago he was thinking that he never gave in to his impulses, suddenly volunteering to put his career on the line for this mysterious, costumed stranger.

Who had saved his son’s life?

“Doctor… are you sure about this?”

“Yes. Yes, I am. More sure than I should be, I suppose. But as you pointed out, I’m a very rich man. My life won’t be over if I can’t practice medicine anymore. In fact, it would probably give me a lot more time with Meg and Jordan.

“Look, I don’t know anything about this ‘business’ of yours, or that costume, or about the things Jordan says that you can do. But every instinct I have says that you’re a decent man, and that whatever you’re doing it isn’t something I’d be ashamed to be involved in, especially on the outside like this. I said I owed you more than I could repay, and I meant it.”

“Alright. I’ll accept your help, Doc, but only if I really need it. If I do need it, I or somebody else will call you, and we’ll expect you to come. And thank you. I promise to do my best, to make sure you don’t regret this. Give my regards to Jordan, will you?”

Without another word Sam’s unusual visitor turned and took two steps to the end of the balcony. Without any sign of hesitation he placed one hand on the railing and easily vaulted over it, his body falling quickly out of sight.

Sam gaped, frozen for several stunned seconds, before he regained control and found himself leaping to the rail. He stared at the ground below, the hard and practical man of science in him expecting to see the body of his visitor, smashed on the unforgiving concrete. And yet another part of him was not at all surprised at the sight of the empty sidewalk below.

He stared at it for a long time.