“Oh, real nice,” he pouted as he shook it off. “You know how much work was in there?”
“I did ask nicely, didn’t I?”
He jabbed his finger out at me. “You know, one day, the truth is going to come out! All the people you've hurt. Taking the law into your own hands. Every time I find a new bread crumb about the Roach, it leads back to you, Reese Roberts. No hospital records of your ‘incident.’ Sanitation says it’s confidential.”
“I’m self-healing.” I rolled backward and went to close the door.
He bolted back up my stoop and blocked it with his foot. “I don’t know who you’re paying off, but you’d have to be dense not to see all the pieces. The Roach used the sewers and water lines to move around unseen. You worked in them.”
“Wow. Now that is rare to find in this city. At least come back with something interesting.”
“Oh, trust me, I have it. I’ve been digging more around the time the Roach disappeared. Right after he got all those girls killed.”
My grip on the door handle tightened. The wood whined as it threatened to snap off. “Yeah, I remember the article you wrote about that. Riddled with typos.”
Chuck adjusted his glasses. “What about how Laura Garrity was sexually assaulted at the edge of Harborside, and how our honorable mayor used it as a springboard for cleaning up the city? A rookie cop on a beat supposedly saved her. A rookie. Now, he’s already a lieutenant on track to be the next chief of police. Doesn’t that sound convenient to you?”
“It sounds like politics.”
“It took me a long time to get anyone there talking, but I went door-to-door. One old blind woman who lives above that alley remembers hearing a gunshot and arguing between men that night.”
“A blind woman. Really?”
“Oh, yes. But she isn’t alone, Reese. A couple of others mention a shadowy figure in a mask—a man screaming in agonized pain. Yet, the police report only mentions Laura’s unknown attacker fleeing after officer Montalvo had arrived. October 21, 1980, in the district where nearly half the Roach’s reported incidents occurred. Right around when the Roach vanished even, and the day before your supposed ‘accident.’”
I bit my tongue.
In every comic, the hero has an arch-nemesis. Batman has the Joker, Superman has Lex Luthor. As usual, I got the shit end of the stick. Chuck Fucking Barnes—since all the other options were either dead or behind bars. I guess maybe he’s a bit like my James Jonah Jameson. You know, the guy from Spider-Man, except Chuck was a pencil-necked, coke-bottle-glasses little twerp with pit-stains and Cheeto breath.
He was a man so hell-bent on uncovering the truth and redeeming his once-sterling reputation that he’d do anything. Go too far.
Except, every part of what he’d said was true. The only reason my identity hadn’t come out was because of who I’d saved. Laura’s dad got me the treatment I needed and kept everything quiet. From the Iron City Water and Sewage Authority head to the former police chief to José Montalvo, the officer who’d ended my vigilante career. Anything that could potentially place the Garrity Act in jeopardy.
For about a year, people asked what had happened to the Roach and why he stopped popping up. By the time the old chief retired, nobody even cared. I was a memory—a name in some old newspaper clippings that’d inspired some cheap action figures and a few knock-off graphic novels of solely local repute.
Only Chuck Barnes kept searching. I might’ve told him the truth just to shut him up if it weren’t for Laura and her father’s involvement. Okay, that’s a lie. The very thought of him getting a win after all the things he’d written, and then a dozen reporters rolling up on my street and hounding me made my skin crawl.
All those eyes on me. All those eager fools stampeding to my door. Asking questions. Making accusations. Talking about things they didn’t understand.
Biting my tongue wasn’t working. “I suggest you walk away,” I said.
Chuck smiled, his little mustache wriggling like the worm he was. “I’ve been doing my homework. You know what I think? I think—”
I grabbed his wrist and squeezed. I had it in mind to snap it, but I controlled my temper.
“I don’t care what you think,” I growled. “A tunnel collapsed downtown and nearly killed me. I met Laura when she led a fundraiser for her father to improve worker conditions. Pretty damn simple.” I remembered that charade we put on. When I had to roll before the crowd and be applauded at for my phony story. I shuddered.
“Fine, fine,” Chuck strained to say through the pain. “Just tell me one thing first.” He jutted his chin into my house, toward Laura and Michelle. “Who’s the father?”
“I said walk away!” I burst through the door and rammed him in the shins with the footplate of my chair. He stumbled back off the stoop, sliced his hand on the rusty railing, and landed hard on the sidewalk.
“Well, that’s just great!” he shouted, staring at his bloody hand. “So, that’s the kind of hero you are?”
“Exactly the kind.”
“You may have everyone staying quiet, but I’m going to find out what really happened that night! I swear it.”
“Have fun.”
Chuck was pulling at threads without an end. The piece of trash who’d attempted to rob and rape Laura wouldn’t be found. He was at the bottom of the Horton River, where I belong. Mayor Garrity made sure of that during the coverup, just like he’d taken care of the trigger-happy cop who’d shot me. My compensation for saving his daughter’s life? I got to avoid being unmasked and going to jail. He got citywide support for cleaning up Iron City in a Roachless world.
Everyone won. Well, except Chuck Barnes and his pursuit of truth. And Laura, though she got Michelle out of it. And my legs. And the Harborside district for that matter, which slowly reverted to the vacancy-ridden shithole it’d been ever since the automobile industry moved on.
I rolled backward into my house just as a police cruiser turned the corner. Its driver blared the siren and flashed the lights once, then stopped in front of my townhouse. A scratched-up sedan followed close behind.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I groaned, pushing my fingers up through my thinning hair.
“Is everything all right?” Laura asked from the kitchen.
“Fine!” I yelled back.
The officer stepped out of his car. His head was shaved like he was in the military, but his eyes were tired. I knew when a cop had seen it all, and this one was jaded. He’d put on a few too many L B’s. chowing down on donuts and fast food tacos. Iron City has a way of grinding down a man.
Chuck crawled to his feet, leaving bloody handprints on my ramp.
“Did you see that?” he demanded of the officer.
The cop brushed right by him, and it took me all of two seconds to realize why. That chubby bully sidekick from the day before exited the sedan behind them, arm in a sling. A woman who could only be his mother accompanied him, hair in curlers, and wearing so much gaudy jewelry, it hurt my soul—West Harborside trash. And wouldn’t you know it, but Isaac stepped out behind them.
The little assholes must have followed me back home, and I’d been too drunk to notice. Great. Kids do so love raising hell for their elders.