Masked (2010) (38 page)

“Then all you got to do is prove he’s innocent and clear him.” Bryerson, hunkered down in front of the minibar, pocketed minibottles of Chivas and Tanqueray. He briefly considered the Bailey’s Irish Cream before slotting it back. “You’ll actually be doing him a favor.”

McNeil unsnapped and opened the briefcase, angling it to face Marshall so he could see the lone, black leather belt sitting within.
“This is for you.”

“And I didn’t get you anything,” quipped Marshall. McNeil’s expression was inscrutable. Marshall stepped in and picked up the belt. Grooved striping and burnished silver buckle aside, it was wholly unremarkable.

“The buckle houses a solid-state radiation module capable of detecting trace amounts and residue,” McNeil informed him. “It’s been specifically calibrated to sniff out ferenium-17, which has a half-life of about two weeks.”

“If Virtue’s our guy, then we got him.” This from Bryerson, who, having cleaned out the minibar to his satisfaction, straightened, both knees popping in protest.

“And if he isn’t and we don’t?” asked Marshall.

Bryerson shrugged, cocked his head, and offered his shark grin. “Then we’ll thank you for your service to this great nation and hope that we never have to lay eyes on you again.”

After impressing upon him the time-sensitive nature of the investigation, they left him to hit the streets and reconnect. Instead, Marshall went right back to bed. But he couldn’t sleep and ended up spending several hours watching CNN’s coverage of the mayhem in Atlanta. Early Wednesday morning, law enforcement officials backed by local heroes, including Georgia’s favorite son, Johnny Victory, had descended on The Indigo Club in the city’s Five Point district, igniting a firestorm that had transformed the downtown core into Battleground Zero. So far, damage estimates were in the hundreds of millions, with eighty-six confirmed dead and over two hundred missing, including Johnny Victory. Newly elected mayor Anthony Williams, who had campaigned on a tough-on-crime platform and authorized the ill-advised raid on the nightclub “notorious for catering to the city’s criminal elements,” had already tendered his resignation in a hastily convened press conference. Although order had been more or less restored with the arrival of Captain Spectacular and his Confederacy of Justice, open skirmishes were
still being reported in isolated pockets of the city.

As he watched a live feed of Amnesty and The Silver Gryphon take down Flashback on the grounds of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Marshall couldn’t help but wonder how a similar scenario would have played out on his old stomping grounds. Probably not all that differently, he eventually concluded. Nobody liked to have their downtime crashed, least of all volatile psychos like Shatterdam and The Purple Lamprey. Throw in The Imperial’s reckless disregard for collateral damage and you’d have been lucky to have a building standing once the dust settled. Fortunately, the authorities in Fortune City had always had the good sense to steer clear. In his day, Vinny’s, and a few places like it, were considered off-limits in the life-or-death battles waged by the costumed narcissists and their hangers-on, undeclared sanctuaries where the rules no longer applied, and every so often, it hadn’t been uncommon to see the odd hero having a drink at the bar or holding a civilized conversation with someone whose headquarters he’d trashed only hours earlier.

The recollection of those days stirred a melancholy longing, something he found altogether baffling given that they’d been, for the most part, truly miserable times. Blaming the previous night’s excesses, Marshall showered, dressed, and headed out for some fresh air.

Rather than pick up his spirits, however, the walkabout had the opposite effect. It was all somewhat surreal, like wandering a dreamworld cobbled together from fragmented pieces of memory, his surroundings familiar yet disquietingly incongruous. The Parkview Shopping Center, once a bustling hangout for high-schoolers and determined shopaholics, was all but deserted, its high-end shops long gone, now little more than a collection of dollar stores and knickknack emporiums. The Win Wah Buffet had also disappeared, along with its room-temperature chicken balls and uninspired shrimp toast. Gone too was the Odessa Video run by the stoic Russian couple, the woodfire pizza place that was always running out of pepperoni, and the mailing depot that doubled as a doggy daycare because half the staff used to bring their pets in
to work with them.

Some things had survived, transformed by time, while others had remained surprisingly unchanged. The Italian deli on Main Street for one. And even though he had never been a fan of the food back in the day, Marshall nevertheless grabbed a table at the adjoining café and enjoyed a sandwich and an espresso, finding comfort in the familiarity of the place.

Partway through the late lunch, his cell phone rang. It was Allison calling to check up on him. And she sounded unusually upbeat. Between booking their Hawaiian getaway and testing out new desserts for the Dosanjh barbecue, she was beginning to prep the house for the arrival of her parents, who would be coming in for a ten-day visit sometime next month. Marshall told her not to worry, that he was being careful, and that, hopefully, he’d be back before week’s end.

It was only after he hung up that he was struck by her puzzling change of heart regarding the barbecue. On its own, it seemed trivial, but married to his mother’s recent unsolicited advice. . . well, if he didn’t know better, he’d suspect that they were in collusion. A few seconds of considered reflection and then it dawned on him that, in fact, he
didn’t
know any better.

He paid for his meal and headed back to the hotel, his mind racing, reviewing past visits, past conversations, ferreting out incongruities, inconsistencies, correlations, and connections. The tumblers turned, aligned, and a potential conspiracy locked in place. Well, it would certainly explain a few things.

“Hey!”

He glanced up, reverie interrupted, to find Terry standing outside the hotel entrance. His old friend, styling in a black bomber jacket and jeans, grinned and jerked his thumb back to indicate the electric blue mustang parked across the street. “Let’s go for a ride.”

Terry sat behind the wheel, singing falsetto accompaniment to a pop tune while a detached Marshall took in the passing scenery from
the passenger-side window. As the warbling vocals of Destiny Lewis singing “Gangbang Gravy” faded out, Terry turned off the radio and threw his former accomplice a sideways glance. “You okay?”

“Sure.”

“Still hungover?”

“No.” They passed through Chinatown, its faux-pagoda storefronts and stone dragon-flanked entranceways timeworn and in disrepair, the once vibrant community now reduced to less than a third of its former glory by the defections of those who had abandoned their immigrant roots for a better life in the suburbs. “Can’t believe how much has changed since I left.”

“Well, it has been eight years.”

“I know. Still—coming back and seeing things so different. It’s. . .”

“Sad? Strange?”

“Yeah,” said Marshall.

“I get it,” said Terry. “You’re feeling kinda disconnected.”

“I know, it’s silly—”

“No, it’s not. It’s like. . . everything you knew moved on without you and what used to be familiar is suddenly unfamiliar, hell, even a little scary.”

“That’s pretty much it,” Marshall conceded, impressed by Terry’s surprising empathy.

Terry nodded knowingly. “It’s like watching that Brady Bunch reunion movie.”

Marshall sized him up, uncertain as to whether he was kidding or not. And realized he wasn’t. “Uh, yeah. Kind of like that.”

Terry redirected his attention back to the road and gave a sad shake of his head. “Man, Greg got old.”

In fact, it had all gotten old for Marshall some time ago, and being back reminded him of just how much he too had changed. And all it had taken was the love and support of a good woman, a willingness on his part to walk away, and, of course, those five years in prison.

Less than six months after she moved in with him, Allison
stumbled across the Downfall uniform concealed behind the false wall of his closet. He came home one afternoon to find it draped over the couch, Allison seated right beside it, leafing through the latest issue of
Nefaria Weekly
with its coverage of the Decimator/Princess Arcana wedding. “What’s that?” he managed lamely. She threw him a look that extinguished any hope of escape, and the next thing he knew, he was fielding a barrage of questions. Yes, he was the ultracriminal responsible for crashing the Governor’s Diamond Ball last spring. Yes, he’d been involved in that massive assault on L.A.W. headquarters. No, he had nothing to do with the break-in at the Metropolitan Museum timed to coincide with the Crown Prince of Brunei’s Gold Shoe Exhibition. That was Deadfall.

She asked, he answered, she pressed, and he gave it all up: his atypical childhood, his secret identity, even his sole foray into team iniquity with the short-lived criminal cartel Pandemonium that eventually disbanded because people kept confusing them with the popular kids’ band Pandamonium. In truth, it was an enormous relief to finally come clean, and after a while he required no prompting. Over the course of those six hours, Allison learned everything about his double life as Downfall, and, to his surprise, Marshall even discovered a little something about himself as well. Yes, more often than not crime did pay, and of course the camaraderie was an important part of it, but, when all was said and done, it was far simpler than that. He enjoyed being Downfall because it fed his ego. He had to admit, there was an undeniable rush that came with knowing he had fans, supporters who followed his criminal exploits with a fervor usually reserved for professional athletes and film celebrities. There was no greater satisfaction than seeing his name outrank the likes of middleweight heroes like Counterforce and Zero-G in the latest Google search rankings, or surfing the multitude of online communities dedicated to his alternate persona. Yes, it was ego that drove Downfall, but it was humility that killed him.

Humbled by Allison’s willingness to forgive, he promised to change and immediately set out to make good on his word—
trashing the uniform, cutting ties with his former cohorts, and enrolling in a web design program at the local community college. Downfall was done.

For about eight months, after which his funds dried up and the lure of a one-time-only score proved too much for him to resist. With the help of two associates, Ember and Blow-Out, he succeeded in tracking down the bio-signature of his Downfall uniform and rescued it from the local landfill, then joined Professor Bedlam and his Agents of Chaos in a multimillion-dollar extortion plot that, had it succeeded, would have set him up for life. Unfortunately, it all went sideways and he ended up in prison, doomed to reflect upon that last unlucky roll of the dice.

Allison didn’t attend his trial, nor did she answer any of his letters, and after his first year in prison, he gave up hope of ever seeing her again. And so, when she eventually did pay him a surprise visit during that second year of incarceration, he was shocked, to say the least. She revealed that as much as she wanted to, she was unable to move on because she still loved him and, more importantly, still believed in him. Whether he believed in himself was another matter entirely.

And suddenly, Marshall did believe, and he attacked the remainder of his sentence with single-minded purpose, not once straying from his new role of model prisoner. After three years, his determination paid off with an offer of conditional release—provided he was willing to play ball with the authorities. Weary of his solitary existence and anxious to prove himself, he’d been more than willing.

“We’re here,” Terry announced.

Marshall frowned. “We are?”

“Yep.” The parking lot wasn’t that full. They were able to find a spot right in front of the Science Center entrance.