“The Cape Dripped Red” Part III

Originally published January 12, 1996, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1156

I felt the oh-so-gentle jab of a toe in my rib cage. The snow against my mouth tasted like New York snow usually tastes: dirty. What else can you expect from something that’s fallen through the air? After all, who knows where the air had been?

I tried to raise my head and get out a word that sounded vaguely more intelligent than a simple low moan of pain. Unfortunately, I was not particularly successful on that score. I made a sort of “urkh” sound, but that was all.

Craning my neck, I saw a cop scowling down at me: one of New York’s finest, wearing a heavy coat and tapping his nightstick meaningfully against his upper thigh. That made perfect sense, of course. He wanted to issue me a subliminal message as to just what I could expect if I chose to do something untoward—like, for instance, bleed on his boot.

“You got a home to go to?” he asked, reeking of sympathy and doughnuts.

I pulled myself to standing, my legs slightly unsteady. He tilted his head, looking at me appraisingly. Perhaps he was toying with the idea of busting me just on the basis of my good looks. “Yeah. I do,” I said.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

“Comic books,” I said, wiping the trickle of blood away from the edge of my mouth. The two gorillas who had tap-danced on my face had done a very thorough, very professional job. I probed the back section of my teeth with my tongue. One of my wisdom teeth seemed a little loose. That figured. Considering how much good my brains had been doing me lately, it didn’t seem like I had much use for wisdom, intelligence, or anything having to do with good old common sense.

“Comic books?” asked the cop. He didn’t sound like he quite believed it. Not surprising: It was my case, I couldn’t believe I was saying it, either.

“Yeah,” I said, pulling my coat tighter around me.

“You a private cop?”

“Yeah. Ðìçk Cosmic.”

“Ohhh, the Cosmic Ðìçk.” He seemed to be thinking for a moment. I could tell because his eyes were moving counterclockwise. “Waaaiit a minute. You looking into something because of a kid? Wants to know who stole the fun from comics?”

I blinked in surprise. Having the cops ahead of me in any situation was certainly a new experience. If it was going to happen in any case, it was sure to happen on one as loopy as this one. “You—know about this kid?” I said.

“Sure. He came around the precinct a couple times. Wanted us to look into it.” The cop shook his head. “Can’t believe some kid would want to waste our time.”

“Right, that’s ridiculous,” I said. “Why waste yours when he can waste mine?”

Except it hadn’t been a waste—not entirely. There was something going on here, something nasty. Bruisers with the IQ of kelp don’t just materialize out of thin air—or even fat air. Somebody was paying them. Somebody wanted to make sure I didn’t get too close. In short, someone was concerned that I was going to find out the answer to a question that I’d previously thought was simply the idle concern of some kid. The concern was no longer so idle.

Night was already well on its way. I staggered back to my office, which is where I slept these days. This was against zoning laws, of course, and my landlord would have been royally teed off about it, if it hadn’t been for the small but not inconsiderable payoff I slipped him every month. I patched myself up as best I could, unrolled my fouton from its hiding place under the desk, and sacked out.

When I woke up the next morning, I pulled out the comic book I’d bought the day before. I looked it over carefully, thinking about the retailer who’d blamed it on the speculator—and the speculator who had pinned the blame on the publisher.

The next stop on this case seemed pretty logical.

An hour later, all cleaned up—or at least as cleaned up as I ever got—I stood in the front lobby of a major comic book publisher. I was impressed by the amount of security it had: large, reinforced glass doors, a buzzer system, magnetized identification cards for employee access.

I flashed the receptionist my best melting smile. “What are you people making here? Plutonium?”

She resisted my charms with herculean effort. “With whom do you have an appointment?” she asked. That took confidence. Clearly, she wouldn’t entertain the notion that someone might just pop by unannounced and unappointed.

“Your boss,” I said.

“Which one?”

“Pick one.”

Her frown deepened. If it deepened any more, it threatened to crack her face in half. “May I have your name, sir?” she asked.

“Haven’t you got one of your own?” Killer comeback. She didn’t crack a smile. Some people don’t appreciate cutting-edge humor. “Name’s Richard Kosmikian.” I felt no need to add, “But you can call me Ðìçk Cosmic, the Cosmic Ðìçk.” I suspected she could come up with more than enough things to call me all on her own.

She picked up her phone, dialed it quickly. I stood there a moment, hands in my pockets, knowing that she probably hadn’t called her boss and informed him that he should snap to on my behalf. Lo and behold, I was right again (an unfortunate and frustrating habit). A palooka I took to be in-house security appeared at the glass door, and he didn’t seem inclined to be any more impressed by me than the receptionist had been.

“And you are?” I asked.

“Rockwell. Head of security. You can leave now.”

He didn’t waste words. Good. I liked that in someone with a limited vocabulary.

I turned and left, came back in around the service entrance, and went up to the mail room. “Got a package for the big boss.”

“I’ll take it,” said the mailroom guy through a window.

“Got to have him sign for it, personally.”

“I said I’ll take it,” the mailroom guy said again.

I smiled amiably. “Well, okay—but could you give me your name?”

“Haven’t you got one of your own?” asked the mailroom guy.

Everybody’s a comedian. Or a detective who thinks he’s a comedian. “Seriously, what’s your handle?” I asked.

“Why?”

“Well, Mr. Rockwell, he said if anyone gave me problems, I should just let him know who it was.”

The mailroom guy blanched slightly and then said, “Well, if it’s that important—maybe you’d better bring it on up.”

“Very wise,” I said amiably as he buzzed me through. He gave me directions to the Big Boss’ office and I ambled up. As I went, I passed giant cutouts on the wall of various four-color super-heroes. They looked strong, dynamic, convinced of their rightness. They also seemed to be based on drawings done a long time ago, because I’d thumbed through modern comics, and they didn’t seem to bear much resemblance to those earlier incarnations any more. Some had pointless jackets or leather straps added to their ensembles, which struck me as being like a guy who wears his jockey shorts on the outsides trying to be taken seriously by adding suspenders.

And there was one dude who stood a little to the side of them. I would say that he was clearly supposed to be a villain, except nowadays it was always a bit dicey trying to figure out who the good guys and bad guys were, based solely on their exteriors. He was dressed in green and purple, and I couldn’t tell if he was just butt-ugly or wearing a mask. He had a malevolent gaze which seemed to follow me down the hallway as I headed towards the big boss’ office.

I had the way pointed out to me and strolled up to his secretary. She was in the middle of typing a letter, and I glanced at it. It appeared to be addressed to freelancers—something about cutbacks in benefits or royalties or somesuch, although the wording tried to make it sound as if this was going to be a positive thing. I wondered if anyone would be sap enough to fall for that and then I wondered why I wondered. She glanced up at me and I said briskly, “Is he in?”

“Uhm—yes—and you are Mr…?”

“Vega.”

She was reaching for the phone. “First name?”

“Don Diego.”

She nodded and picked up the phone, and as she started to dial I took the initiative and simply walked into the office.

The Big Boss was standing there, looking out over his view of the city as if he were trying to figure out just how much he could get for it. The snowfall had ceased during the night, but there was still a vague winter wonderland look to it. He turned and stared at me. Actually, not quite. He seemed to stare through me. “Was I expecting you?”

“I’m kind of inevitable. Like death and taxes.”

“Or ignorance and arrogance,” he replied, looking at me levelly. My skin was ready to crawl off my carcass. “And you are?”

“Ðìçk Cosmic,” I said, opting for my nom de guerre. “I’m a detective. I’m investigating on behalf of a 12-year-old kid named Billy Gates who wants to know who took the fun out of comics.”

“Billy Gates? Any relation?”

“To whom?” I asked.

The secretary bustled in, her hands fluttering in vague patterns, starting to mutter apologies. The Big Boss waved her off dismissively. “Take a coffee break, Irene,” he said, and Irene quickly walked out again. The boss circled a desk that jets could have landed on and said, “So—you’re working for a disgruntled reader, eh?”

“I’m working for a kid who finds that comics don’t give him the joy they used to.”

“If he’s looking for short-term answers, he’ll find that it has to do with age more than anything. We average about 100% turnover in readership every four years. It’s part of the natural order of these things: hardly something you hire a detective for. Besides, have you looked at the comics on the racks? They’re all the same. Everything blends one into the other.

“We do something and the other guys copy it, and other people copy them. Sooner or later—usually sooner—the kids’ interest runs out. Simple as that.”

“That’s a pretty easy answer,” I said. “However, part of his frustration is coming from a marketplace that’s dying. Hard to close off your nose when the stench of dying books is everywhere.”

“True enough,” admitted the Big Boss.

“And the retailers blame it on the speculators, and the speculators blame it on you.”

“On us?” The Big Boss laughed at that. It was not a pleasant sound. “Mr. Cosmic,” and he sat in his large chair, which creaked under his bulk. He wasn’t huge, but he wasn’t a swan, either. “Mr. Cosmic, I’m sure you’re aware of the laws of supply and demand.”

“I don’t trust any laws that don’t carry jail time.”

“We are a supplier,” said the Big Boss, “nothing more. We supply what the market demands. That’s all we do. If the market wants spin-offs, we give them spin-offs. They want fancy covers, we give them fancy covers. They want more, we give them more, and if they want less, we give them less. It’s no more complicated than that.” He leaned forward, his fingers interlaced. Maybe he was planning to build a web between them.

“If you’re looking for a true villain of the piece, I suggest you look to distributors. Do you know what happens when distributors give you problems?”

“I dunno. Your car won’t start?”

He looked at me with an expression I’d come to know all too well: pity. “Distributors get the comics to the retailers. And the distributors in our little industry became too self-important, Mr. Cosmic: too self-important, too self-aggrandizing. They had too much power and they were going to use it.

“Here were these twerps whose entire careers had been built up through our efforts and they were turning on us. Playing favorites. Pitting one publisher against the other, jockeying for position, angling for even more power.” He paused. “Believe it or not, Mr. Cosmic, I’m a religious man. I assume you are familiar with what happens when you sow the wind.”

“You reap the whirlwind.”

“That’s correct. Publishers built the direct market—and then they took back the direct market. It’s gone, Mr. Cosmic. It’s destroyed. And distributors have no one to blame but themselves. Publishers have a right to control their own destinies, without having to worry about the over-inflated egos of distributors.”

“So it’s the distributor’s fault.”

“No one else’s.”

“Well, thank you, sir; this has been very educational.” I rose to leave. He didn’t get up. I headed for the door and then, in best detective fashion, paused. “Just one more question.”

“There always is, isn’t there?” he said amiably. Maybe too amiably.

“You called yourself a supplier and nothing more.”

“That’s right.”

“There are some kids out there—kids such as my client—who see comics as more than just a publishing concern. Who think that the first priority isn’t a cold marketing judgment of how much stuff to shovel out, in what package, and how frequently. Who see it as a means of telling stories or creating a modern mythos, of even producing—God help us—work that has some sort of artistic merit. What do I say to kids who consider that to be a publisher’s first priority?”

He paused, thought, blew air out his lips, and then said, “Tell them to grow the hëll up.” Then he turned in his chair and presented me the back of his recliner.

There was nothing more to say. I walked past the now-empty secretary’s desk, left via the main elevator (winking at the startled receptionist, who couldn’t figure out how the heck I’d suddenly materialized inside her highly protected domain), and went down the street 20 stories below.

A brisk wind was kicking up as I stopped to light a cigarette.

And then I heard a crash, a shattering of glass in the far distance. I looked to the left and then the right, trying to figure out where it was coming from—and suddenly realized that it had originated from directly overhead.

I looked up.

A body was plunging toward me. It had just passed the tenth story and was on a collision course with my skull. Blue cloth seemed to be fluttering from all around it. I could hear a scream being torn from the faller’s throat, high pitched and terrified. People were likewise screaming from across the street, cars skidding to a halt as the body plummeted.

I leaped backwards into the doorway just in time, as the faller smashed into the sidewalk with that kind of sickening melon-squashed sound that you hear once and never forget. I’d heard it three times in my life, and it never got any better. The scream ended at exactly the same time, although the shrieks from bystanders were still trailing off. I took a hesitant step forward, trying to see the remains, figure out what had happened.

It didn’t take much detecting to accomplish that.

It was the Big Boss, or at least what was left of him. And that blue trailing cloth that he’d been wrapped in was clearly more than a cloth. It was a cape. There was a huge red blotch in the middle that was spreading with every passing second.

It had only been minutes before that he’d been looking out that big picture window, contemplating the city that was his for the taking. And now it appeared that the city had taken him, instead.

And someone had gift-wrapped him.

To Be Continued

Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.