Chapter Three: In The Belly
“What,” I say, the darkness parts to white, medical white, surgical white.
I try to clear my head, but I can’t. I feel like I’m on a bender, waves riding waves, no guilt till it’s over.
“Why?” He’s talking again.
“Why don’t we have any information on you?” “Why aren’t you in our systems?”
I want to answer, but I don’t understand the question. “I was underground.”
He’s mad at me. I can tell. “No one is that underground.”
I begin to see, a tray with bullets, what do we call them afterwards? like bugs? “Slugs!” I say it out loud, and broken syringes. “Oh, that one isn’t broken.”
“Arrow!” I laugh. “Someone called me arrow, Swift Arrow, like justice, swift …”
It’s white, still white. I’m on my back, looking up, I can’t move, I don’t want to move, looking up at the light. Someone else is talking, “Fluids… lost a lot of blood. We can juice him again later…”
The man I heard before is still unhappy. “He’s an undocumented Super for fuck’s sake. We need to know how he got off the grid, if there’s more like him.”
Things are spinning, red and yellow flashes, then dark, but it’s ok, the blanket, the ground.
Then someone else talks, “We’re losing him. We’re stopping now. This is over…” This is over. I like that. It’s OK. I won’t come back. This time, I won’t come back.
In 1952, Bob’s face is covered by a blue/black hood, a skull painted on it in fluorescent paint. He calls himself Nightmare. He’s a professional wrestler, and he chases criminals, all in the same outfit. He’s like that damn wrestler in that Mexican comic book. He even started wearing suits over his costume. He’s making money hand over fist. The vigilante thing is great publicity for his matches, but it’s been a while since he’s taken down a real criminal, so we’re in his sedan driving to Kansas City. I’m all civilian, drinking gin out of a flask. Bob has his mask on, His tie, loosened, his suit coat in the back. He’s smoking a cigar, listening to Frank Sinatra on the radio. He turns it down but keeps his eyes on the road.
“Was she your mother or something?”
“The old lady, the one our guy messed up, she your mother or aunt or what?”
I take a drink before I say, “None of the above.”
“Someone else beat up your Mom?”
He puffs on his cigar. The glow lights up the fluorescence on his hood. Cars approaching watch death drive an Oldsmobile. “So you must of beat up an old lady yourself then?”
I put the flask in my pocket, look straight ahead. “Why do you say that?”
“’I’m afraid I’ll kill the guy.’” He says my words back to me, “’You’re job is to keep me from going too far, killing the bastard for what he’s done.’ Usually vengeance or guilt makes a guy say that. That’s why most of us wear the costumes isn’t it? Vengeance or guilt. Rule out vengeance, and you’re left with a guilty conscience. Unless you’re me, of course.” Nightmare smiled. “Me, I just like beating the hell out of people, plus the girls love the outfit.” He laughed, turned up the radio and drove through the night.
I wake. I feel like hell, real hell, worse than hangover hell. I’m hardly awake when the dry heaves start. I roll to my side and fall off my cot onto the floor. I stay there on the concrete waiting for the spasms to end. When I stop, look around, I see I’m in a cage, not a cell, a god-damn cage, metal bars everywhere, three inches in diameter. I’m a lion, a bear.
Outside the cage is a large building, concrete floor, walls and ceiling. I can see directly around the cell, but the light fades before I can make out anything else. The cage has a cot, a toilet and sink and nothing else. I take that back. Right next to the cot is a plastic bottle of water. Suddenly, I’m dying of thirst. I crawl to the bottle. I tell myself to take it easy, ‘don’t just pour it down your throat,” but I don’t listen. I gulp it down, and most of it comes right back up.
After I’m done, I take a look at myself. I’m in some sort of hospital gown, naked underneath. The bullet wounds have been bandaged. There are needle marks on my arms.
I’m going to wait. They’ll come. This isn’t a prison. This is a waiting room. They’ll watch me here, get whatever info they think they can from that; then when they’re ready, they’ll take me into some dark place, tie me down and ask questions. That will be the place I’m interrogated. That will be the place I’m tortured.
Over the next hours I walk around, test my legs. I even give the cage door a couple of rattles. I use the sink to get more water. I try to regain my strength, but when I walk I stumble on purpose. I try to act as exhausted and frail as possible. I don’t have much on my side, but the hope they underestimate me is one.
My best play is to make a break for it while they move me, and if they still think I’m tired and sick, I’ve got a better chance. So instead of doing pull-ups from the cage ceiling, I purposely trip over my water bottle. I go down, hard, harder than I’d planned. I try to get up, but things start spinning. I can’t stand, and it doesn’t make sense. I’m going, and I don’t understand.
In 1952 I wake late. I drank myself to sleep the night before, so I’m hurting.
The hotel room’s cheap. I can smell the bleach they use to try and cover the mildew. The battle was a tie and the two smells hang in the air. Nightmare would have paid for a better hotel, but I insisted on going it on my own. Stupid move. Nightmare didn’t want to be too far away, so he got stuck in this shithole with me.
I find my flask and try to take a swig (just to take the edge off), but it’s empty. For a moment I’m tempted to look for a cut-rate liquor store but think better of it. Instead I take a shower, try to wash the stink of the drive and booze off me. When I come out of the bathroom, I find Nightmare in a chair. He’s got his mask off, but he still looks like he’s wearing a costume with that expensive Italian suit stretched over his big frame. He’s got a wrestler’s face, cauliflower ears, scars from reoccurring infections. He takes a bite out of an apple before offering me one. I shake my head. My stomach won’t take it.
“You know, food is good for you.” he says as he finishes.
“I’ll eat later. Let’s get out of this rat trap and find our guy.”
“Fine with me.” He looks around. “Not quite the accommodations I’ve grown accustomed to.” I let the comment go. “You’re going to make sure a news photographer is there when we bring him in, right? Use your journalistic connections?”
“I’ll have one there.” Nightmare smiles and starts in on the other apple.
“So when do you put on the suit?” I’ve finished dressing and am moving toward the door.
“After we find him and before we bring him in.”
“You’re costume. I like it. Functional but still an eye catcher. Not like Golden Lad – shorts – Jesus, what was he thinking?” I just stare. He gets up, makes a basket with the apple cores, then smiles. “That’s what I like about you Arrow, so god-damn chatty.”
“Let’s go.” I say, opening the door. The two of us walk into the sunlight.
Nightmare drives. We’re heading to an address near the railroad yards. I make Nightmare stop at a liquor store. I talk the clerk into letting me use the bathroom. I put on the uniform. The clerk doesn’t bat an eye - not even when I pour a pint of bourbon into my flask and leave the bottle on the counter.
I do my drinking before I get in the car. Nightmare takes the time to put his hood on. The painted skull actually sparkles in the light. He sees my flask, so I offer it to him. He shakes his head, “I might be a prude, but I like to wait till after noon before I start my drinking.”
I say, “your loss,” but it’s half-hearted. “The guy’s got a cousin down here. Our heavy likes to come down here when things get hot back home.”
“So you think he’ll be there?”
“No. He knows someone’s coming for him. But his cousins got a family, a job – he’ll be there. He can’t afford to spend his days at some flea-ridden hotel like our thug. We lean on the cousin; we get our guy.”
Nightmare turns to me. “What do you mean by ‘lean-on?’”
“I’ll let you know when I do.”
I wake, and the vomiting starts almost immediately. I try to bend down, quit puking on my chest, but I can’t. I’m tied to a chair, if you can call it that. It’s poured concrete with inch thick steel loops studded over it. Steel cables are threaded through the loops and wrapped around my arms, legs, chest.
The convulsions stop. My chest is damp with water, spit and stomach acid.
“Dumb,” I feel dumb. Hoping I would have a chance when they moved me. They’ve dealt with people like me before. They’re not going to take any chances. They gassed me before moving me. They’ll do it again if they move me. There isn’t a god damn thing I can do.
“Can I get your name, please?”
“What?” I didn’t even notice him – the man standing across from me.
“Your name, I’d like to know the name of the person I’m talking to.” He’s nondescript, medium height in a dark suit. He’s got glasses. His face is slightly plump. He’s firmly middle-aged. I smile at him.
“I thought I gave you a name when I was drugged.”
He doesn’t smile back, just says, “not many remember being under. We’ll note that.” He’s holding something in his hand, a small black rectangle. He looks down at it, taps it. “You said you were “Swift Arrow.” He continues tapping. “Swift Arrow was a masked vigilante. He’s purported to have fought crime from 1945 to 1969. His real name was John Dartmoth. He was a crime reporter. He was married once, divorced. He had a son who died in 1983. He died in 1985.”
He doesn’t look up. I’m sure someone else in the dark notices my surprise. I didn’t think anyone knew John Dartmoth and Swift Arrow were the same person, but then I was dead 30 years. A lot can happen.
“So you aren’t John Dartmoth or Swift Arrow. You’re an unidentified Super directly involved in the murder of four cops and two civilians.”
I give him another smile. “Well, that’s good to know.” Now he looks up. “Good to know you had to come up with a story to justify locking me up without due process or a trial. I’d hate to think you could throw me in this hole with no justification whatsoever.”
“We need to know who you are, where you’re from, why we don’t have any records of you.”
I talk through my teeth, “If I told you I was John Dartmoth when I was on your damn truth serum, isn’t anything I say different a lie?”
He smiles, the bastard smiles. “Truth Serum. You do sound like someone born a hundred years ago.” He pauses, “ And I’m not sure why? If it’s an implanted memory to send us off-track, it’s a bad choice.” He puts the black box down on something lost in the shadows. “Maybe you have the ability to resist the drug and are a bad liar with an interest in dead masked men.”
“Or maybe, I’m telling the truth.”
“We’ll see.” He looks me in the eye then reaches for something near him. “This isn’t over.”
He puts on a gas mask. I think he says something else, but by then I can’t think anymore.
