To be fair, when the Eidolon was achieving this latest fete of misdirection, he did it with the help of Cotton Colinaude. Taking advantage of an easily picked maintenance closet, one man became the other, and it was Colinaude who waited along with a dozen others to ride Traverse’s subway. Some heroes took the cumbersome route of carrying with them changes of clothes. That just looked like poor planning to him. And he looked like anyone else at the moment, no special identifying uniform to set him apart, just the worker’s jeans and tee-shirt, rusty blue and rusty red respectively, of the average individual. Eidolon’s wares were a costume, too, but they were first and foremost his uniform. He considered the activities he did inside them to be like any other trade.
Waiting with him was more than a few individuals the Eidolon had encountered in that trade. Some of them had been on the good end, some on the bad. It was always awkward coming across the bad again, knowing what he knew, and knowing that he had no quarrel with them as long as they were behaving. That was, perhaps, the chief difference between how he operated and how the more official channels did. He didn’t hesitate, outside long-term cases like Cad, to intercept malevolent operations he knew to be going on, but he didn’t bother those he knew to be associated at one time or another if they weren’t at the present time engaged in such activities. True, figures like Rancor blurred that line, but even Rancor had other interests to occupy some of his time. If Colinaude’s intelligence was accurate, his archenemy ran a nightclub in Taipei. And there was nothing to worry about there.
Cassandra Holweger, who had once spent her spare time as a thief called Calypso, nodded toward Colinaude as they both happened to notice the subway cars rolling toward them, from Colinaude’s direction. There was no reason to suspect Holweger had any idea who she was nodding to, a man who had prevented her from lifting Central American pottery shards from Traverse Memorial Nicholas E. Poliquin Museum to help fund a planned second and greater heist two states over. She spent her time now in advertising. It was Colinaude’s understanding that Holweger had even designed a number for the museum last spring, telling of another Incan show.
As they were boarding, he thought how nice it was to have a pleasant thought from Eidolon’s activities. He usually had anything but. There was one seat left for him; maybe it was chivalric, and maybe that had something to do with the Eidolon, but Colinaude always let everyone else in first or out, depending on the circumstances. The seat was next to a small man with big ears and a twitching nose, whose right leg was bouncing up and down nervously or unconsciously, perhaps in an instinctive way. He was reading the "Traverse Tracks." Colinaude found himself nodding again.
After the cars had pulled away from the station, he spent a few moments lost in thought, peering through half-interested eyes at persons across from him jostling at the regular motion of the subway. He then took advantage of his usual ten-minute ride and caught much-needed rest, closing his tired eyes and letting his head sag toward crossed arms, knowing both would bump around and perhaps offer as much, or perhaps less, amusement to an observer as he had gotten.
When ten minutes had passed, as Colinaude always seemed to know instinctively even if he still checked his watch to make sure, he aroused himself, got up, and departed the car, waiting his turn behind the others, of course. He tapped the shoulder of the man he’d been sitting next to, and said, "Hopper."
The man replied immediately, "That’s me."
"I know it is," Colinaude said. "Anything interesting in the old rag today?"
"Nothing we don’t already know," Hopper said, tucking the paper beneath one arm. "Which is the beauty of it, I’d say. The best news is the stuff you don’t need to read about coming from some hack in a newsroom stoking his own ego. That isn’t news, it’s reporting news."
"That’s why they call them reporters," Colinaude said. "So, got any news for me?"
"Always do," Hopper said. "But first, do you lose him?"
"Would I be talking to you if I hadn’t?" Of course," Colinaude said. "Neville is out chasing ghosts. Don’t worry about him."
"I’ve heard about other agents recently," Hopper said. "They’re asking around, looking for someone. Down in Texas."
"Any idea what for?"
"Not a clue," Hopper said. "I don’t think even Solvent knows. I assume you’re going to be seeing him next?"
"That’s the routine," Colinaude said.
"So you won’t be," Hopper concluded.
"That’s a reasonable assumption," Colinaude said. "You set a routine, they catch on. That’s how Neville and all the rest caught on to the starting point."
"And you let Neville and all the rest continue tracking you from there?" Hopper asked. "Isn’t that dangerous?"
"Not in the slightest," Colinaude said. "First, they’re not interested in bringing me in just yet. Second, stringing them along gives me kicks. You know that."
"But it never ceases to amaze me," Hopper said, "your eagerness to brush with danger."
"That’s a part of the game," Colinaude said.
"Oh," Hopper said. "Right. How could I forget?"
"You’ve been reading that newspaper too much," Colinaude said. "The obvious should be more obvious than that."
"Cad, speaking of obvious," Hopper said, "has a few appointments around town today, including a high priority one in the rodent district at noon."
"We’ve got to come up with another name for that one," Colinaude said. "I practically live in the rodent district."
"Well, the other one," Hopper said. "You know what I mean. I’ve made a few more notes inside the paper. You know how to find them."
"Right. About this Texas deal," Colinaude said, accepting Hopper’s paper, "anything else you can tell me? Anything at all?"
"Afraid not," the retreating Hopper called out. "I’ve got another ride to catch, if you don’t mind."
"I never do," Colinaude said, though Hopper was no longer around to hear it. The time of day, the location, the manner of approach: all those were always open to variation, but this was always how the two caught up. There was only one time they’d met in any other fashion, and that was when the partnership had been formed. And that was years in the past. Even with the variations, theirs was very much a routine engagement, which was not going to break unless one of them stopped showing up. Hopper had no idea that Colinaude had an inclination to. But he would know that it wouldn’t be personal. Nothing about the relationship had ever been.
Now emerging on Beacon Street, Colinaude found the usual alleyway and located another of his costumes, his uniforms. Technically, he’d never been ‘off duty,’ but the beauty of being a super hero was that he defined his entire workday. There was no one to moan about his changing in and out of the proper apparel. Strictly speaking, there was no proper apparel for a super hero. It was all a matter of choice. Some of them chose to go the traditional route, at least as it had been throughout the 20th century, and wear what most would deem a costume. Others chose the more culturally typical way, as it had been in the 19th and was slowly becoming more prevalent again. But Colinaude had never had a taste for leather, which is what those going the alternative way invariably favored. He thought they ended up looking somehow far more aberrant that way, a part of some fringe group.
Super heroes were not fringe, really. Maybe not very common, but they were a lot more visible and regular a feature in everyday life than some of them might like, or think. They were generally not tabloid fodder. Colinaude was, at times. More often than he’d like.
From Beacon Street there was more misdirection to be achieved, because as much as he knew he was not just a rumor in Traverse, Colinaude did not want Eidolon’s activities unduly hampered, which is what invariably happened to any hero caught by the media, who proved to be more dangerous than any criminal, from Random Red to Rancor. They were, sadly, a social illness that proved untouchable, for the most part. They were also, in the end, mostly harmless.
On the off-chance that someone might spot Eidolon, a picture might be taken at best, or at worst…There were many enemies out there, enemies from firsthand encounters, enemies from word-of-mouth, enemies who made themselves so in an effort to prove something, or enemies who just happened to become them. Some enemies were more assertive than others were. Colinaude did not make it past the alley. Once he’d emerged clad as the Eidolon, thinking he was as safe as his casing of the area had made him feel, he hadn’t thought to expect greetings. But they came, in the form of a vicious clubbing to the back of his head. He wasn’t knocked out, as Random Red had been earlier. His assailants were apparently not interested in that, just him. He was thrown in the back of a truck, and driven off, blindfolded and incapacitated by crudely knotted ropes.
The ride was brief enough. He had a general idea of the destination, based on direction and distance traveled. It wasn’t far from the rodent district, but not quite there. Colinaude struggled against the ropes, found the weak points. He wasn’t going to free himself from them. Not yet. There was going to be some use from this predicament, that much he knew. It was now simply a matter of how useful, and what the price was going to be. All in all, not much different from anything else. Colinaude, of all people, understood that. And it was in situations like these he thrived.
No comments:
Post a Comment