Free Falling, Part 10
By: C. Leuch
The Falcone family home was a large, ostentatious mansion on the outskirts of Gotham. It was an old house, often spoken of in the same breath as Wayne Manor and the other old money homes in town, though its gothic façade and ornate landscaping often seemed to strike people as somewhat sinister. It was no wonder, CJ thought, eying the state-of-the-art security systems hidden around the grounds. Regular patrols of well-armed goons with dogs swept the grounds, making this possibly the most unwelcoming property on the east coast. Not that he needed a welcome, he thought, systematically shooting beams of heat at each of the security devices, creating a hole in the coverage that he would soon be exploiting. It felt good to be using his powers again, he thought as he leapt up over the security fence and landed in a long shadow on the lawn. He quickly moved from shadow to shadow as he made his way toward the house, tracking the patrols with his enhanced vision, choosing to avoid them rather than confront them and cause a disturbance. Soon enough he was under the window to the study, watching through the wall as the old man, Carmine Falcone, worked studiously at his desk. It would be easy enough to jump up and crash through the window, but that wasn’t Batman’s signature style. Instead, CJ eyed the private balcony a couple dozen feet or so away, leading to an unoccupied guest room. With a leap, he flew through the air, then summoned what meager flight abilities he possessed to land gently and without a sound. The balcony door was locked, but his heat vision made quick work of it. Slipping into the house, he snuck carefully thorough the corridor, finally reaching the study door. Before entering, he thoroughly x-rayed the room, noting the panic button mounted to the bottom of the desk. He followed the wires through the wall, surreptitiously zapping them at the point that they entered the hallway wall, also taking out the phone lines while he was at it. With a small smile, he opened the door and entered the room. Carmine Falcone glanced at him, outwardly uninterested, though his eyes burned with an inner fury.
“Batman,” he said, his voice weaker than it had once been, betraying his advanced age. At one time he had been one of Batman’s more formidable enemies, an underworld boss capable of mobilizing men and moving large quantities of drugs and materials. He had practically owned the town at one point, but that was a very long time ago, and things had changed.
“Surprised to see me?” CJ asked, keeping his voice low and gravelly.
“Cut the niceties. Why are you here?” Falcone asked, putting down his pen and placing both hands, palms down, on the desk.
“I had an encounter with your grandson the other day. He said something that intrigued me.” CJ took a step forward and straightened up into his most menacing stance. Falcone didn’t seem impressed, though he did cock and eyebrow at the statement.
“That kid has been called a lot of things, but intriguing was never one of them.” His smile was sly.
“Yes, well, I’m sure that he’s keeping the city jail staff quite amused with his wit right now,” Batman said, though he didn’t smile.
Falcone shifted his arms and relaxed in the chair. “Please, Batman, you don’t honestly think that I’m going to let him rot in jail while I still own half the staff?” Falcone’s laugh was mocking. “And weapons charges? That’s the best you can do?”
“The best I can do is stringing him up and making him confess to the whole plot in a very public area,” CJ replied. “But I have bigger fish to fry. So here I am.”
The mocking smile remained. “You’ve gone soft. I remember a time when you would punch your way into a confession. You made men fear you, because they never knew what you would do next.” He leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk. “It’s been how long since you strung someone up? Publicly humiliated them? Now you make empty threats and hope that people will forget that you never follow through on your tough talk. You coast on reputation alone…HIS reputation. But you aren’t him, are you? You put on his clothes and drive around in his car, probably with his blessing, but you aren’t half the man that he was.”
CJ smiled. “You think?” he asked, taking another step forward. “The way I see it, I don’t need to beat your kind to a pulp to get results. I have my own form of intimidation,” he said, letting his eyes glow red, noticing how Falcone’s smile quickly faded. “I probably am half the man he is, but I’m also a lot more.” He picked up a paper weight from Falcone’s desk, one that was fashioned from solid marble, beautiful and extremely solid. With one movement, he crushed it to dust. He watched with satisfaction as Falcone’s arms dropped and he leaned back, his eyes wide.
“I think we understand each other,” CJ said with a smile, wiping his hands together to rid himself of the marble dust. “Now tell me – why would your grandson think that I would be out of commission last night?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Falcone scoffed, but CJ could see fear behind his defiant exterior.
“Really?” CJ asked, this time ambling toward the bookcase and grabbing the oldest book he could find. It was a first printing of a famous novel. “I was shot, Falcone,” he said, thumbing through the book. “And your grandson knew exactly what would happen. He knew that I would be a little less…empowered by the time the day was up, which tells me that he knew about a certain project carried out by Orbital Technologies.” He shot a small blast of heat at the corner of a page if the book, just enough to since the paper and send out a whiff of smoke, but not enough to set it on fire. “I think it’s pretty obvious that your plan failed, because I’m here, and good as new. And more than a little angry.”
“And taking out your frustration on priceless pieces of literature?” Falcone said with annoyance.
“Just personalizing it for you,” CJ answered, putting it back. “I’m thinking about personalizing your desk next.” Being a Batman with ethics was hard, CJ thought with an inward sigh. Bruce really would probably drop the pleasantries and dangle him off a building or something. CJ had to admit that the possibility was mighty tempting, but he knew he couldn’t do it. But modest displays of strength, with the threat that there was a whole lot more power at his disposal if he so chose, coupled with a little bit anger, could provide quite the attitude adjustment. Sure, it involved a little bit of property destruction, but that was something he could live with. “Who were you working with Falcone?”
“What makes you think I’m working with anyone?”
CJ smiled again. “You may think you own this town, but I have yet to see you try to pull off anything on a more global scale in the time I’ve been around. Frankly, your men aren’t that smart.” On the side of the room mounted on the wall were a couple of antique pistols. He casually reached for one, turning it over in his hands, before he decided that it needed a little personalization. He went to work with a little heat vision and a fingernail as he spoke. “Let me lay out a scenario for you,” he continued, focusing on his masterpiece. “Your partner in crime, whoever that may be, promises you a city without caped protection. Guarantees it, in fact, on a certain day. You see a major payday, a chance to be the big man in charge again. Who’s going to stop you? Certainly not the Batman. Thing is, though, your caped protectors are a little more resourceful than you give them credit for, and the whole scheme crumbles in less than a day. Then here am I am, standing in your office.” He finished his work, a nice little bat symbol etched into the barrel of the gun, then hung it back on the wall where he found it. He really was quite proud of the work. He then took a moment to look around, his smile widening as he did so. “You do keep meticulous records, don’t you?” he said, zeroing in on a filing cabinet, then tuning back toward Falcone, who was now positively white. “Every business contact, every little scheme…could get a guy in trouble.”
“It wasn’t just me he talked to,” Falcone rasped. “Guys in Metropolis, Chicago, Central City, Coast City…they were all in on it. He said he wanted chaos.”
“Who?”
Falcone hesitated a moment, possibly weighing whether it was worse to have Batman mad at him, or his contact. He made is decision, then looked at Batman, all defiance gone. “Senator Robbins,” he said, and a cold shiver worked its way down CJ’s back, though he made an effort to not let it show outwardly.
“See, that wasn’t so hard,” he said, turning to leave.
“What are you going to do now, Batman?” Falcone asked. “You say you have names….”
CJ turned and looked over his shoulder, x-raying through the filing cabinet. “Jimmy Rizzito ring a bell?” he asked, then turned back toward the door.
“Maybe we locate some of Lex Luthor’s rock. Maybe next time we take care of you for good. You better grow eyes in the back of your head.”
“And maybe I pinch every one of your guys before you can say ‘empty threat.’ I can play this game, too,” CJ answered, walking away.
“You’ll regret it,” Falcone growled, standing at his desk. “Carmine Falcone will not be pushed around!”
“You already have been,” CJ said, reaching the door. He then stopped and looked over his shoulder. “And if you do something to me, well, perhaps my predecessor will come and dangle the lot of you off a building. I wouldn’t want to see him mad, if I were you.” With a nod, he left the room.
Any hopes of a quiet exit were quickly dashed. As soon as the door closed, after trying the phone and panic button and noticing they weren’t working, Falcone threw open his window and started yelling to the guards. With stealth no longer an option, CJ walked boldly down the hall, down the grand staircase, and out the front door. The further along he went, the more goons he encountered, but none of them provided any resistance. All were dispatched without a second thought, and he couldn’t hide a smile as he approached the gate and left the grounds. It felt wonderful to be back, he decided, relishing the feeling of raw power. He had taken so much for granted, and he intended to not do that again. As soon as he was away from the chaos, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed his mother. He pocketed the phone as the audio played through the earpiece in his cowl.
“Hey, Mom,” he said, noticing when she answered that she didn’t seem tired, even though it was quite late. “Say, I paid a friend of mine a visit tonight and got a name for you. I know we found circumstantial evidence that suggested that he was involved, but it seemed too outrageous to believe.”
“Senator Robbins?” Lois asked.
“I have confirmation it was him,” CJ answered. From behind him, one of the patrol dogs ran up and attempted to bite him in the leg. The dog had its jaws around CJ’s calf before he was able to stop it, though it quickly let go with a yelp. No doubt it was akin to trying to take a bite out of a concrete block. CJ almost felt sorry for the dog, who was no longer following him.
“Good work, honey,” Lois said. “You want me to give you credit when the story runs?”
“God, no,” CJ said with a chuckle. He glanced over his shoulder and noticed that the other dogs had paused at the one that had tried to bite him. More goons were running up to them, yelling at the dogs to continue on, without success. CJ walked along, practically daring them to try and stop him, secretly hoping that he’d get a chance to pound a few more of them. The men ultimately decided that it wasn’t prudent to consider the pursuit, and CJ soon found himself alone on empty street. “I work in the shadows, Mom. If you want to thank me, maybe mention who’s doing such an awesome job cleaning up Gotham.”
“You mean Dick? You’re right, the poor guy probably does need the press.”
“I meant me,” CJ said, feigning exasperation. He knew his mom was teasing, but he had fun playing along. “Dick really does need the press, though.”
“How about we come up and thank you both personally…maybe next weekend.”
“You might want to come up earlier. I have a couple houseguests that will probably want to talk with you guys. You know, to gain some perspective.”
“Ah, got it. Well, it might be a couple days before this story clears. But we’ll try and find some time.”
“Okay.”
“In the meantime…go clean up the chaos out there that was caused by this satellite stuff so I can write a nice puff piece about Batman.”
“Yes, mother. Love you.”
“Love you, too. And thanks for the tip,” Lois said, and with that, the call ended. CJ continued to his car, his hearing clearly picking up the chaos in the city around him. It really was a mess out there – it was amazing what one bad night and word of mouth could to set everything on edge. It was up to him to put a stop to it, and after a day filled with naps, he supposed he had the energy to go out all night if he had to. And now that his main task for the evening was taken care of, that was just what he intended to do.
***
Upon arriving in Metropolis, Jon deposited his father-in-law at his townhome. They landed about a block away, in a blind alley that more often than not served as Jon’s private landing strip. Entering his house, the twins seemed excited to see them. Jon had only been gone for a day, but a day to kid might as well be an eternity, and they let him know how much he was missed. Also missing was Diane, who was still at work, and had been gone almost as long as Jon had. Under the circumstances, he felt awful leaving them again so soon, but he needed to find his wife, and from the sound of things, the city needed a little super help. The kids were in good hands with their grandparents, and Cruz had plenty of interesting stories to tell them now. Jon made sure to give hugs all around, then left mere minutes after he had arrived.
Upon leaving the townhouse, he took to the skies, scanning the city. The amount of criminal activity going on at that moment rivaled the worst days that he had seen so far as a superhero, both in numbers and in the sheer brutality of it. It seemed to be everywhere and all at once, and it took all of his patience to hover above it all and not act. But he needed to talk to Diane first, then make a plan of action. It was possible that taking out a few of the major players could cause a substantial amount of the activity to cease, but he wouldn’t know who to target until he talked with someone who had a good handle on everything going on out there.
Hovering over the precinct, he saw her there, hustling between interview rooms, reading through files, lost in her own world. Going down there in his civilian identity didn’t seem like a good idea, especially since he could see another Planet employee hanging out at the front desk. Showing up out of the blue as Superman also didn’t seem prudent, since it would be difficult to explain why, exactly, he needed to talk with one particular officer out of the dozens buzzing around the precinct. The best course of action, he decided, was to handle one of the crimes in the neighborhood and deliver the perpetrator to the station, taking the time to explain it to the one cop in the building who seemed to have her nose in every case.
His mind made up, it wasn’t too hard to find a local crime to foil. A dozen blocks away, a car was in the process of being stolen. He landed on the street behind the perpetrator, apparently quietly enough that he didn’t even notice. After a few seconds, Jon cleared his throat, catching the man’s attention. For the barest second, he was sure that the man was going to run, though he seemed to realize pretty quickly that it wouldn’t make any difference. With a resigned sigh, he dropped his tools, and moments later they were at the police precinct. The sight of Crimson Superman instantly brought smiles and happy exclamations from the officers. Jon couldn’t help but smile himself at the welcome.
“Uh, thanks,” he said, tightening his grip on his prisoner. “Who wants this guy? Is officer Kent around?”
One of the officers behind the desk sprang to action, directing Jon through into the bowels of the station. As he dumped the man into a holding cell, the other officer ran off to fetch his wife, who arrived a moment later, appearing pleasantly surprised. “I caught him stealing a car a few blocks from here,” Jon said, pointing is thumb toward where he caught the man.
Diane nodded, amused. “Really taking a bite out of crime, there,” she said. Jon smiled teasingly.
“I can give you all the gory details, if you want to go somewhere a little more private to discuss it,” he said.
She cocked an eyebrow. “The interrogation rooms are all full, but the Captain’s office is free. We can step in there.” He tried to hide his disappointment, knowing that the captain’s office had one wall that was mostly glass, affording them almost no privacy. She gave a small shrug, indicating that she was feeling the same thing he was. But he knew better than to expect privacy in a police station. He held out his hand, indicating that she lead the way, and followed her away from the prisoner holding area to the office. They entered in silence, then both sighed once the door was closed. Behind them, through the large window, the police station buzzed with activity, but if they faced away from it, toward the back of the office, they could almost pretend that none of that was there. And they could speak freely without anyone reading their lips.
“Just make it back?” Diane asked. She made a show of grabbing a notebook, scribbling down some notes as they spoke. It also kept her hands occupied so that he couldn’t absently reach out to hold one.
“I dropped your dad off at the house first. He wanted to come up and I couldn’t say no. Also said hi to the kids. But with everything going on, I couldn’t stay long.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re here. It’s bad out there, and we need all the help we can get.”
“Glad to be of assistance,” he said with a smile. Not being able to touch her, even though she was right next to him, was almost painful. “Before I do anything, though, I wanted to check in and see where the hot spots are.”
“Smart man,” she said as she turned toward him, a little twinkle in her eye.
“I’m just well aware of where the action is,” he replied, and she smiled in return. For a moment he had the strong urge to lean in and kiss her, but then her eyes shifted to the surroundings, and suddenly her expression was all business. The sudden change was like being doused with cold water, and he couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. But she was right – he had gotten lost in those eyes and forgotten where he was. Clearing his throat, he forced his arms crossed over his chest and stood up straighter.
Diane, for her part, shuffled fractionally further away from him. “So, uh, it’s been a hell of a night,” she said, studying a photo on the wall and refusing to make eye contact with him. “The gangs have suddenly called a truce and turned their efforts to causing as much chaos as possible. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, except that nothing is off limits. We’ve had our hands full picking up guys when we can, but for every one we take off the streets, another two pop up. No property is safe, no store front is safe. It’s like a war zone.”
“You think they’re cooperating with each other? Why would they do that?”
“Yeah, I do. I’ve been trying to pry the information out of the perps we’ve picked up, but so many of them are far removed from anyone in power. Guys who heard from other guys that there would be a free-for-all on that day, and nobody would be able to stop them.”
“My brother said he heard someone say the same thing in Gotham, which makes me think that this is a lot bigger than it seems at first blush.”
Diane nodded, hazarding a glance toward him. “I’ve been in contact with your mom. I think she’s got a lead on something. She didn’t say what, though.”
Jon frowned. “Fat lot of good that does me right now,” he said, making a mental note to visit his mother when he got a chance. “I was hoping I could go take down the kingpin and everything would clear up.”
“Your optimism never ceases to amaze me,” she said with a soft smile, before her eyes turned to his chest. “Honestly, I think just making your presence known will make a world of difference. I get the feeling that they anticipated you and your dad would be out of commission and that’s why it’s blown up the way it has. Speaking of your dad, when is he coming back?”
Jon shrugged. “Who knows. He got stuck in Australia. Their daylight hours don’t exactly align with ours….” He uncrossed his arms and started pacing on the far side of the desk. Diane watched with curiosity, though he hardly noticed. His mind was formulating a plan, one that would give him as much visibility as possible. No doubt there was some press out there covering the action, so maybe the best place to start is the one that would get his face on the late news. Then he would probably need to make a show of being everywhere at once, which wasn’t technically possible, though he could make a good show of making it appear that way. “I think I’m going to need you to make some calls,” he said, drawing another eyebrow raise from her. She positioned her pencil over the notepad, waiting for him to continue. “I plan to hit this hard, which means getting to as many of these guys as I can tonight.”
“Sounds exhausting,” Diane said.
“I got some good sleep last night,” he said with a waive of the hand. “Anyway, I don’t want there to be any doubt that I’m back. I’m sure these guys won’t be sitting at home watching the news – they’ll need to see it with their own eyes. The plan is for me to catch them in the act and drop them at the nearest precinct, giving a statement to someone there and moving on as fast as I can.”
“So you’ll probably need someone at each location solely dedicated to processing these guys,” Diane said, writing something on the notepad.
“That’s what I was thinking. Some of the busier places, maybe two men. This is going to go as quickly as I can make it. I want these guys to think my vacation was spent making clones of myself.”
“That would certainly solve the secret identity thing,” Diane answered wryly, causing him to stop abruptly. He turned toward her, then burst out laughing at the statement. It was so out of place in the conversation they were having, but it made for a wonderful interlude, if only for a moment. He composed himself quickly, noting that she still looked completely unfazed.
“The faster I go, the sooner we can both go home,” he said in a low voice, taking a step toward her. “Then maybe I can pay you back for that.”
“You can do your best, flyboy,” she answered, her voice barely above a whisper, her face very deliberately turned away from the window. His heart felt a burst of love, then he forced himself back into a neutral expression.
“Until then, be quick with the calls? I want to get this over with.”
She nodded, taking a few steps toward the door and laying her hand on the handle. Once the door was cracked open, she started speaking again, her voice almost too loud. “I’ll make sure we have all the personnel you need ready to assist you. Thanks for your help.”
He bowed his head, then sped off, making it appear to those in the precinct that he had simply disappeared. The first thing he did was hover over the city, surveying the activity and forming a plan on how to approach the job. The television trucks were parked at different high visibility places around the city – one just outside Centennial Park, another near the swanky shops uptown, where the looting was merciless. He’d start there, he decided, noting the location of the camera rig and approaching the scene to get maximum screen time. He stopped next to some looters entering the broken front window of a high end handbag store, grabbing one with each fist and hoisting them out of the store, in full view of the camera. He made sure to pause and let the criminals squirm a bit, then said, “I’m back,” with a little smile before taking off. After depositing the criminals at the nearest police station, he returned to the same location, repeating the performance a few times, though he varied what he said each time. “Surprised to see me?” “You know, it’s a crime to take things that don’t belong to you.” “You’re going to take a quick trip to meet some friends of mine.”
Satisfied that he had bought some good press, he turned his attention to a few more matters that were a little more serious. In a neighborhood uncomfortably close to where he lived, some teens were taking pot shots with a pistol at various features, such as luminaires and traffic lights. He put a stop to that quickly. On the main freeway through town, gangs were putting up rolling roadblocks and terrorizing the traveling public. It was considerably harder to do when their cars were atop a local abandoned building. Gun crime was spread across the city – muggings, assaults, and worse – and he spent an hour or so cleaning that up. He spent another hour or so randomly finding and picking up mischief makers. In all, it was rather intense and exhausting, especially for someone who had only recently gotten his powers back, and as dusk approached, he decided that it was time to wrap things up for a while. He delivered his last catch to Diane’s precinct, then found her again.
“You do work fast,” she said to him, not bothering with finding a private place to hold their conversation. He was too tired for that anyway.
“Not all the time,” he answered with a half smile. “But tonight, I was aiming to impress….”
“I am definitely impressed. I didn’t think it would be possible for one man to squelch that mob out there and get things back to normal, but damned if you haven’t gotten awfully close.”
“So the word is out, then?” he asked, looking toward a coworker of hers.
“It’s all anyone can talk about,” the coworker said. “Hell, my wife called just to ask if I’d seen you yet. I told her that I ain’t never seen anything like what you’re doing tonight. We couldn’t even process one before you were bringing in another, and it was that way all over town,” he said. “You must be exhausted.”
“I’m…Superman,” Jon said, causing the coworker to laugh.
“That you are,” he said, reaching out to slap Jon’s shoulder before turning and walking away.
“You know, the OTHER Superman,” Diane added, a teasing twinkle in her eye.
“Ouch,” Jon said, with a hand over his heart. “I think, with that, I will retire for the evening. You seem to have everything well under control here – maybe you should do the same.”
She nodded. “Maybe I should,” she said. “Good night.” With that, she also turned and headed toward her desk. As he was getting ready to leave, his superhearing picked up something else, said at barely more than a whisper. “You better wait up for me. I want to welcome you home properly.”
“Mmmm,” he said, completely involuntarily, as an anticipatory shudder worked its way down his back, drawing one or two awkward glances from people near him, then he took off for home.
***
The eastern sky was just beginning to lighten with the first signs of morning when Clark finally made it back to Metropolis. Flying back from Australia had taken a little longer than anticipated thanks to the gigantic box now pushed up against his left hip. Get too bold and try to go multiple times the speed of sound and it was possible that the box would disintegrate, raining his personal possessions across the Pacific Ocean, or worse, across the western United States. Getting them back again wasn’t a problem for someone with superspeed and x-ray vision, but it was a pain that he didn’t particularly want to experience. The house was quiet and dark as he landed in the back yard and quickly made his way through the garage and toward the bedroom. Lois, he saw, was asleep in bed, though she was propped up against the headboard, papers and folders scattered around her and in her lap.
Carefully, Clark cleaned up the mess, stacking the papers neatly on her nightstand. Then he stripped off the suit and crawled into bed, kissing Lois on the forehead and gently wrapping his arms around her, pulling her onto his chest as he laid down. He told himself that it was to ensure that she didn’t end up with any kinks in her neck, but he knew it was more than that. Even though he had spoken to her on the phone, hearing her voice was a weak substitute for actually being near her, for holding her. He missed her smell, the curves of her body against his, the little way that her breath caught in her throat when she slept. If it meant experiencing those things, even after a single night away, then he would gladly lay awake until the new day officially dawned and she awoke. Then hurricane Lois would hit full force, he was sure. And he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Resting his cheek against her head, he gave a gentle sigh and closed his eyes. A moment later she stirred, her arms tightening around him. “Clark?” she mumbled, her head still resting on his chest.
“I told you I’d be here when you woke up,” he said softly.
“Never doubted that,” she said with a happy sigh.
“Go back to sleep. We still have a couple hours before we need to be up.”
“Papers,” she said, her eyes finally opening. She lifted her head to look around, but stilled at his touch.
“I stacked them on your table,” he said, running his hand up and down her arm. She turned to look in his eyes, then nodded, laying her head back down on his chest.
“Read them,” she said, closing her eyes again. “Call it homework.” She gave a small smile, then relaxed and stilled.
He watched her sleep for a few long minutes, then reached over and picked up the first folder on the top of the stack, labeled “Orbital Technologies.” Over the course of the next couple hours, he read the papers slowly, then reread them all just to make sure that he fully understood everything. By the time Lois’s alarm went off, he was staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, processing what had to happen next, and what it meant.
Lois swiped blindly for the alarm to turn it off, finally sitting up and giving it a good smack. The physical act of sitting up usually meant that she was up for good, and today was no different. She sighed and ran her hand through her hair, noticing the expression on Clark’s face once she finally looked back toward him. “You read it all, didn’t you?” He nodded. “So…?”
“How could you go to sleep last night, knowing that?” he asked, gesturing toward the files now neatly back on her nightstand.
“Pure exhaustion?” she said with a small smile and raised eyebrows. He looked at her skeptically, which only broadened the smile. “Plus, I knew that I would need my beauty sleep to nail that bastard today.” God, he loved that fearless confidence of hers that hadn’t dulled over the years. Apparently, the look in his eyes gave him away, and she leaned down to engage him in they type of kiss that made him forget that anything else existed. It lasted only a blissful minute, then she pulled away, patting him on the chest. “Let me take a shower, then was can talk it over.” With that, she hopped up out of bed and went directly into the bathroom.
He busied himself with the routine of getting ready for the day while waiting, although he didn’t plan to go into the office, since officially his plane was still in the air. That didn’t mean that he couldn’t still do some work from home. He had whipped up a light breakfast when she finally reappeared, dressed and refreshed. “So tell me all about your investigation,” he said, handing her a cup of coffee.
“This was a weird one,” Lois said, settling into a seat at the table, where a bowl of fruit and a plate with toast prepared just the way she liked it awaited her. “I was investigating a disaster that nobody knew about, and will never know about. Like with any disaster, there was a sense of urgency in trying to figure out the cause and how to make everything alright again, but because it was a very private disaster, there were no grandstanding politicians or cries for justice to propel the case. It felt more like one of our deep cover operations, where we try to ferret out the truth without anyone realizing that we’re even there. And let me tell you, it’s hard to be covert and fast at the same time.”
“Especially without superpowers to aid the cause.”
She pointed at him. “That’s for sure. Anyway, I really wanted to get everything resolved before anyone figured out that you and the kids were missing. You being out of the public eye for a day is nothing unusual….”
“I’ve taken vacations in the past for weeks at a time. A day isn’t even a blip on the radar,” Clark said.
“But much longer than that becomes a problem.” Lois nodded. “Complicating the investigation, though, was the fact that, at the same time, cities across the country just seemed to erupt, out of the blue. Nothing in particular seemed to have triggered it, and the violence didn’t appear to be targeted at anything specific. It was just chaos. Violence for the sake of violence. Nobody seemed to know what to do, everyone seemed scared, and the police were overwhelmed. It seemed like the type of thing crying out for a little super assistance, but none was forthcoming.
“So here you have two big events, seemingly unrelated at first blush, but it didn’t take much imagination to see how they could be part of something bigger. Because Jon had a vested interest in figuring out why your powers disappeared, and had a good lead on what was responsible, I let him take the lead on that facet of the case. Diane and Dick were out on the front lines fighting the chaos, and were in a position to try and get to whoever was behind it, through their own…unique interrogation methods. So they took the lead on the hands-on portion of the ivestigation. My job became trying to find the connective tissue between everything. It couldn’t be a coincidence that these cities were breaking out in violence at the same time that you guys are out of commission.”
It was interesting to get her side of the story and how the investigation developed, but Clark found himself impatient to get to the good part. “So the kids figured out Orbital Technologies was behind our powers disappearing, and took care of that problem. You researched the board, and some higher placed executives, and found a lot of the usual political meddling.”
“It’s like any of these agencies with big government contracts,” Lois said. “The politicians that fund them insist that they build in their districts, then they recruit their friends and family to work for them. Makes me sick.”
“And that’s where you first saw Senator Robbins’s name,” Clark said, drawing a nod from Lois.
“Texas senator with a ton of family in Houston. And his nephew just happens to be a whiz at computer programming, and, surprise surprise, the lead programmer at Orbital Technologies.”
Clark took a sip of coffee and looked at her thoughtfully. “Your research didn’t show any connection to the crime wave, though.”
“That was a tricky one,” Lois said. “But then two Zarate goons tried to kidnap Spencer North down under, and something clicked. I looked back at some of the surveillance we did on those guys, and one of their frequent targets was our good senator. They also paid a couple visits to the Falcone family in Gotham, who CJ said had advance knowledge of what was going to happen. That was the connection. That ties it all together. Then, late last night, CJ got a name from Falcone – Senator Robbins.”
The idea of higher placed government officials doing such a thing brought back old twinges of fears, old warnings from his father that g-men would take him away and lock him up if the world ever found out about him. He liked to think that the emergence of Superman and the welcoming embrace he had received from people the world over had put a lie to that, but every now and then something happened that proved the wisdom of his father’s words. It made his blood run cold, and anger welled up along with the fear.
“But why?” Clark asked. “Why would a United States senator want our family out of commission? Why would he start a wave of violence, assuming it’s true?”
“Ask yourself what his platform is. What’s his big issue?”
Clark had to think a moment about that. He generally didn’t pay much attention to the politics of senators from outside his state if they didn’t affect some prominent national issue. “I don’t know. Immigration?”
“Crime,” Lois said. “Specifically, support for the police and military. My theory is that he wanted to overwhelm the local cops to call for more Federal money to be funneled to them. Face it, Clark, there are people out there who think that Superman makes the local police complacent, and that’s bad for business when your signature issue is strong law enforcement.”
“Isn’t he up for reelection this year?” Clark asked, putting his food down as the bile rose in his throat. This man did something that affected his children – that could’ve killed them, in fact – and he did it as a cheap political stunt. Things like this eroded his faith in their national leaders, particularly those who talked big about law and order. Senator Robbins didn’t believe in law or order, despite what his political rhetoric said. He believed in power and control. To people like the Senator, Clark’s family was nothing more than a means to an end. It was no wonder Superman stayed as far from the political arena as he could.
Lois nodded, the disgust in her expression no doubt mirroring his own. She was evidently thinking the same thing he was. She sighed and looked away. “If you take away the confession, which would never be admissible, the case against the Senator is pretty flimsy, evidence-wise,” Lois said, and Clark couldn’t disagree. “And the reason why he would want to kidnap your Hollywood doppelganger still isn’t clear.”
“Propaganda,” Clark said quickly. It made sense, didn’t it? “If a strong, independent Superman is a problem, why not replace him with one that you can make your puppet? They could coerce him to make all those political endorsements that I’ve stayed far away from over the years. Make him spout off on how much he loves the local cops, how much he loves the senator. And what could I do about it? I’m out of the way.”
“But not anymore,” Lois said with a twitch of the lips.
“I’d love to take a quick flight down to Washington to let that guy know that his secret is out. And that I won’t stand for anyone targeting my family, I don’t care who they are.”
“But you won’t,” Lois said, laying a hand on his arm. “That’s not how Superman works.”
Clark signed. “I know,” he said quietly. “It’s just so frustrating. After all this, he’s going to end up as Mr. Clean, no whiff of scandal anywhere around him.”
Lois gave his arm a squeeze. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
Clark quirked an eyebrow. “How?”
The smile she gave him in response was seductive, and he thought for the millionth time how lucky he was that she was on his side, because if she wasn’t, he’d have been a goner a long time ago. “I still know guys who know guys,” she said. “We also have a network of friends and family in the affected cities with an interest in getting to the bottom of things. Even if the evidence doesn’t meet the standard to get him thrown in jail, I’m sure that there will be a few reporters and campaign operatives that would be very happy to let the public know what we find. Then, with any luck, he’ll be an ex-senator.” Her smile quickly faded, and her eyes burned with intensity as she spoke. When she turned toward him, he saw the type of raw determination that moved mountains. If Lois Lane said that this man was going down, then she would do everything in her power to make sure that’s what happened. “He messed with my babies, Clark,” she continued. “By the time I’m done with him, he’ll wish you had gone down there and threatened to launch him into orbit, because that will feel like a vacation after what I have planned.”
Clark wrapped an arm around her and drew her close. At first she sat rooted in her spot, defiance plain in her expression, but after a moment she seemed to give in an accept his embrace, and all at once the mask of the hardened reporter fell away. All the vulnerability and pain she had held in for the last couple days bubbled to the surface, and he held her in silence, letting her get it all out. Every now and then she gave a shuddering sob, and eventually her arms found their way around him, clinging to him as if she never wanted him to leave. After a few long minutes, the sobs died away, her arms loosened their grip on him, and she straightened up again. Her fingers absently ran their way through her hair, she dabbed her eyes against the back of her shirt sleeve, and it was as if that interlude never happened. He knew well enough to not probe more deeply into the subject at that moment. With the storm past and her emotions confronted, now was the time for action, and he intended to be there for it. “So what do you need me to do today?” he asked.
She smiled at him gratefully, knowingly. “Since you’re not officially here, I guess you get research duty. Maybe call up Barry and Hal and see who was at the front of the crime waves in their towns. Get as much as you can to tie them to Robbins, or to Zarate’s goons. I’ll start with the interviews.”
“I would also recommend you read the article I wrote up for the morning edition prior to leaving Australia,” Clark said. “Did a little more of a deep dive into the men who tried to kidnap Spencer. Delved into some of their acquaintances and business associates, and touched on that surveillance work we did on them.”
“Robbins has to be feeling the heat,” Lois said. “Maybe he’ll do us a favor and slip up. Say something he shouldn’t.”
“We can only hope,” Clark said, reaching for his toast again. Lois, too, was now devouring her breakfast. She was done quickly enough that it almost seemed she had tapped into some super speed of her own. She looked at him and smiled again.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, then stood, taking her dishes with her. He stood and followed, wrapping his arms around her from behind and planting a kiss on the top of her head.
“The kids will be okay, you know. They’re tough, and not just physically – you made sure of that. They could’ve spent the last day licking their wounds or feeling sorry for themselves, but instead they took action. Together, they solved the problem and made everything right again, and I am so incredibly proud of them for that. And I’m proud of you for giving them that tenacity.”
“I’d say we both contributed to that,” Lois said, turning in his arms. “You can’t be a shrinking violet and Superman at the same time….”
“You remember what I was like when I first came to town, right?” Clark asked with a crooked smile.
“I mean, sure, you were green. But the blue spandex, mmm,” she closed her eyes and tilted her head back at the memory, practically begging him to plant kisses on her neck. He gladly obliged, eliciting a giggle from her. “I would say that you were anything but shy.”
“I think part of me just wanted to show off for you,” he said between kisses. “My boldness back then was entirely because of your influence.”
She arched her body into his. “Good to know,” she said, finally capturing his lips with her own. The kissed hungrily for a few minutes, then he picked her up, deciding that it was time to thank her for her many contributions to his life, and to the world in general. “I have to get to work,” she said weakly between kisses.
“I don’t think anyone will mind if you’re five minutes late,” he said, taking a few strides toward the staircase.
She looked at him playfully. “I only get five minutes?”
He smiled at her. “I don’t have anywhere to be today….”
Her finger traced a pattern on his shoulder, stoking the fire. “Just kiss me, flyboy.” With that, he closed the distance to the bedroom, closing the door behind him out of habit. Though his life might have some bumps every now and then, it was most certainly good, and it would take a lot more than a rogue senator to change that.
