Chapter 7 – Midnight Jammer and Encyclopedia Brown

Although Zann usually loved shopping, she didn’t love shopping with her father. The man could spend half an hour looking at ties, comparing colors and prints. A tie is a statement, he said. He was fixated on the ability of the tie to deliver a subliminal message about power and influence or whatever, so every tie had to be compared to every other tie to determine what message it would send and whether that was a message he wanted to send.

As Zann’s eye wandered the rest of the store, looking for something, anything, of interest, she spotted Charlie Peters walking toward a nearby register with a dress shirt in his hand. She headed toward him. “Hey, Charlie,” she called.

Charlie turned toward her with something like panic in his eyes. “Oh, uh, hi,” Charlie said as he handed his purchase to the cashier. “What are you doing here?”

“Shopping with Daddy, ” she said. “What are you doing?”

“Just, you know, buying a shirt,” Charlie said as he handed money to the cashier.

Zann caught a glimpse of the shirt as it went into a shopping bag. “Wow, isn’t that shirt, like, way too big for you?”

“It’s not for me,” Charlie said. “But it’s not what you think.”

“What do I think?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said, looking miserable.

“Charlie, it’s just a shirt,” Zann said. “It’s no big…”

“Okay, honey, ready to go?” her father said as he stepped up beside her. Charlie’s expression grew even more panicked, if that was possible.

Zann tried not to groan out loud. “Okay. Which tie did you get, Daddy?”

He waved the question away. “None. They just weren’t saying the right things to me.” He looked at Charlie. “Hello.”

“Hello, sir,” Charlie said, holding out his hand.

“This is Charlie Peters,” Zann said as her father and Charlie shook hands. “He goes to my school.”

“I see,” her father said. “I didn’t think kids your age shopped in places like this.”

“Daddy,” Zann warned. She didn’t think she’d ever seen someone’s face go as red as Charlie’s was at this moment.

“What?” her father asked. “It’s not an insult. Just an observation. This is a store for old men like me. What did you get?”

“Just a shirt, sir,” Charlie said, holding the bag open.

Her father looked and nodded. “Nice shirt. Isn’t it awfully big, though?”

“Daddy!” Zann said angrily. “That’s the fashion!”

Which wasn’t entirely true, but he’d never know, and she wanted to spare Charlie any further embarrassment.

“Okay, sorry I asked,” her father said. “Far be it from me to criticize ‘fashion.’ Although just a word of advice, Charlie. Don’t try to grow up too fast. Enjoy your youth while you have it.”

Charlie nodded. “Okay. Thank you, sir.”

“Ready to go, honey?”

“Yes, Daddy,” Zann said, turning to leave. “See you on Monday, Charlie.”

“Yeah, see you.” Charlie waved and walked away fast, clutching the bag to his chest.

*****

“The thing you have to understand,” Angar was saying, “is that this stuff has to go through the system. Yeah, you can just check your bags at the counter at the last minute and run back to the plane. But the bag’s got to go through the whole procedure, and while your bag is making its rounds, you’re sitting on the plane looking at your watch and saying, ‘Take off already.’ And it’s your own damn fault for not getting there earlier, because it’s your bag the plane is waiting for!”

Digger wasn’t really listening. They’d driven for more than an hour back to Yuma, changed into civvies (those that could), and come with Rusk to a pricy restaurant with a mostly private room where they could eat without drawing undue attention to themselves. Digger was on his second beer (a Sapporo–he didn’t normally spring for imports, but since Rusk was buying, all bets were off), listening with half an ear to Angar complain about his former day job (and airline baggage handling was in fact every bit as boring as Digger had always supposed), while the group waited for Rev to show up.

Digger was already regretting the decision to join the group. First there had been the stranger with his cryptic warning, then there had been the miserable drive to Yuma, and now they were having to wait for Rev, and why? Because the idiot was trying to maintain a secret identity.

Bad enough that trying to maintain the secret tended to be a 24/7 distraction, but in a group like this, it just screamed “Can’t Be Trusted.” Of course, Rev had told them the usual tired excuses for not revealing his identity, like the ever-popular Not Putting His Loved Ones in Danger. But in practice, it usually turned out that the secret-keeper was in fact a deadbeat dad with liens against everything he owned, or an ex-villain, or most fun of all, a current villain trying to infiltrate the group and destroy it from within.

Even Rusk didn’t know who Rev really was, which meant they would have to hold his salary in escrow until Rev could establish a legally anonymous payment delivery vehicle. Hero laws provided for such things, of course, but they were complicated and a total pain in the ass. Secret identities were just more trouble than they were worth. But how could Digger persuade Rev of that fact?

“But I can’t complain too much,” Angar said. “The money was decent, and I got to work outside, wear shorts, and throw stuff around. So yeah, overall? It was a good job. Nice to get back to beating up bad guys, though, I’ve got to…”

“There he is,” Rusk said, and Digger looked through the private room’s door toward the entrance.

A young man in his early 20’s stood there, looking around. He was good-looking, around 6 feet tall, built like a gymnast–muscular but not huge–with flowing blond hair and blue eyes. His clothes were a total mess, though; he was wearing a dress shirt (still creased as though it had just come straight out of the package) with sweat pants and kung fu sandals.

Digger relaxed a little. Guys as good-looking as Rev were usually fashion plates as well, which brought with it a certain amount of vanity. It was often hard to get them to listen to anything you had to teach them. But if Rev still had trouble dressing himself, he might be teachable.

Rusk got up from his seat and fetched Rev over to the table. “Everyone, this is Rev. Rev, you’ve already met Val and Angar, and Doctor Jolt. I forget, have you met Marissa?”

“Yes, definitely,” Rev said, shaking hands with Fleming. Marissa? In the brief time they’d spent together, Digger had never learned her first name.

Rusk led Rev toward the other end of the table. “As for the rest, this is Kevin Chen, a.k.a. The Whiz.”

Chen stood up to shake hands with Rev. He was Asian, good-looking, all slick moves and slick hair, but not too much upstairs from what Digger had seen so far. “How’s it going?” Chen said. His accent was pure Chicago, mostly Midwestern flat with just a trace of East Coast grate.

“And this is Warren Keyes, otherwise known as X-tron 12,” Rusk said, turning to the other man seated at the table with them. Keyes was a great, flabby bear of a man, with shaggy red hair and scraggly whiskers defining his jawline. He looked like some slacker who ate Cheetos while playing videogames in his mom’s basement, rather than the pilot of an advanced weapons system. Looks were often deceiving, though, especially in this line of work. His hand engulfed Rev’s. He didn’t say anything, just nodded vigorously, his chins flapping with the motion.

They came to stand in front of Digger at the far end of the table. “And I’m sure this gentleman needs no introduction.”

“Of course not,” Rev said, shaking Digger’s hand. He glanced down once as their hands clasped, noticing the scar tissue, but didn’t recoil. “Nice to meet you, sir. I’m a big fan.”

“I like the ‘sir,’ but now that we’re working together, you might as well call me Digger,” Digger said.

“Right. Okay.” Rev smiled, relaxing a little.

They took their seats and Rusk called the waitress over to take their orders. When that was done, Rusk got to his feet and held up his mug of beer. Rusk hadn’t really struck Digger as the mug-of-beer type, but he locked eyes with Digger briefly as he held the mug up and gave a little nod. He cleared his throat and said, “It may not seem very significant to you, but this is the very first time that our entire group has been in the same room together. And call me an optimist, but I choose to believe that tonight is the start of something big. So I’d like to offer a toast.”

The assembled heroes raised their glasses. “To the Phoenix Phront,” Rusk said. “The most powerful group of heroes ever assembled. May we prove a boon to our city and strike terror into those who would do her harm.”

The assembled heroes murmured their assent and drank.

“Now, I just need to get a little business out of the way, and then we can party,” Rusk said. “We’ve got Yodaville for the weekend, so get the most out of it you can. On Monday, we drive into Phoenix and take possession of the headquarters. And on Friday, a week from tonight, we’ll have our Grand Opening Gala. It’s going to be a huge party with practically the whole city in attendance, and I can’t stress enough the importance of getting off on the right foot. So I need everybody to be at their best. Between now and then, we’ll have some various bits of business we’ll need to complete, crossing eyes and dotting tee’s, as it were, but we’ll talk more about that on Monday. For now, let’s just enjoy our meal and get to know each other.”

As Rusk was sitting down, Digger spoke up. “Um, if I may, there is one other piece of business I need to bring up real quick.”

“Digger, now is not the time to make a stink about Rev’s secret identity,” Val said.

“What’s wrong with it?” Rev asked.

“Everything,” Digger said, “but that’s not what this is about. I got a visit the other day, right after we met, Val. From Peeping Tom.”

“No way,” Angar said.

“Who?” asked Chen.

“This guy who used to stalk us in L.A.,” Val said. “Whenever we had a big fight, he would be watching from a rooftop somewhere nearby, always wearing the same hat and coat. He never did try to talk to us, and the few times we tried to confront him, he had disappeared by the time we got to his rooftop.”

“Huh. We have a guy just like that in Chicago,” Chen said. “Hat and coat, watches heroes fight from a rooftop. We always called him the Couch Potato.”

“You mean the Spectator?” Warren asked. “That’s what we called him in Seattle.”

“Could these all be the same guy?” Val asked.

“Some people think so,” Rev said.

“What do you know about it?” Digger asked. “Have you seen him in Phoenix?”

“No,” Rev admitted. “But I’ve read articles. In Hollywood, they call him the Talent Scout. In New York, he’s the Innocent Bystander. Some people think he’s a groupie. Some think he’s a casting agent for movies or something. Some folks say he’s a master criminal, or maybe a government operative, compiling a database of every hero and bad guy in the world. And some people speculate it’s actually a group, some kind of weird fan club that just adopted the coat and hat as a uniform, like the Boy Scouts or the Red Hat Society.”

“You do your homework,” Rusk said. “I like that.”

Rev smiled and blushed.

“It’s not a group,” Digger said. “I’m pretty sure it’s one guy. And I think he’s one of us.”

Suspicious glances made their way around the table.

“Not one of ‘Us,’ us,” Digger said. “I mean, I think he’s a super. And he gave me a warning.”

“What kind of warning?” Val asked.

“It was about Davey Lopez.”

“Who?” Warren asked.

“Long story, short version: you guys are all familiar with the space monkey invasion in L.A. about nine, ten years ago?”

Heads nodded around the table.

“Okay, I teamed up with a guy named Astro when that happened…”

“Jeez, that guy?” Val asked.

“Val never liked him much,” Digger explained. “But L.A. was covered with thousands of green space monkeys, all converging on a central point. And that central point was Davey Lopez’s house. Turned out, Davey Lopez was this kid in a coma who created these sort of solid mental projections, like his dreams would come to life in the middle of town, and it was usually him as Astro fighting some space monster or other. He always loved space monsters.

“Anyway, although everyone knows that I stopped the space monkeys, hardly anyone knows what really happened. Fact is, it stopped when Davey… He didn’t wake up, exactly–he stayed in the coma–but it’s like he became aware of what he was doing. And since then, he hasn’t really done anything with his power, other than come to visit me every now and then.”

“But Peeping Tom thinks Lopez has something to do with us?” Doctor Jolt asked.

“Yeah,” Digger said. “He didn’t say how, exactly. I don’t know what he thinks will happen, but he’s worried about something.”

“Well, everybody’s worried about something,” Rusk said. “I don’t see how that should make us change any of our plans.”

“Davey Lopez,” Rev said thoughtfully. “Are you talking about Coma Boy?”

“Who?” Digger asked.

“Oh come on,” Rev said, looking at all the blank faces around the table. “Surely you guys know the story about Midnight Jammer and Coma Boy.”

“Do you realize how incredibly dirty that sounds?” Digger asked.

“It’s not a s-sex thing,” Rev stuttered. “There was this club in L.A. They played live music, and they thought it was haunted because this guy would just appear on stage, around midnight, and play with whatever band happened to be on that night. He’d just jam with them for a song or two and then disappear. So they started calling him the Midnight Jammer. And it got to be this whole thing, where people would go to the club just to see if he’d show up.

“Then one night, he gets up on stage and says it’s the last time he’s ever going to play. ‘But if any of you ever liked my music,’ he says, ‘you should help this kid. He’s in a coma and his mom can’t afford the medical bills and is about to lose her house.’ And he tells them the name and stuff, which I think was Davey Lopez. So there was this record company exec in the audience, and he decides it would be good publicity to follow up on this thing. He starts a foundation, takes donations, and now the kid’s being taken care of in a private hospital and the mom is set for life.”

“Huh. So he does do other stuff,” Digger said. “How do you know about it?”

Rev shrugged. “I read an article. Don’t you guys keep up with, like, what other super-people are doing?”

“Not really,” Digger said as other heads shook around the table.

“Well, there you go, Digger,” Val said, smiling. “You wanted to know what he brought to the table other than being a vanilla strongman, and now you know. He’s Encyclopedia Brown.”