Part One – Uptown
The snowfall had just begun, a light flurry that seemed incompatible with the weatherman’s prediction of an all-out blizzard before morning. Bobbi ran along the sidewalk, trying to jump and catch snowflakes on her tongue, but before she could manage to get one, her mother called her back. That was when the cigarette butt landed beside her.
Figuring someone from the building above had thrown it down from a window, she naturally looked up. It didn’t take too long to figure that nobody threw anything out of the windows; they were stained glass church windows. The building where the cigarette must have come from was the catholic church.
Her mother called her again, and Bobbi ran back to follow her as she shuffled the Christmas shopping. “Hey mom, do angels smoke?”
“No dear, that’s devils.”
“Oh.”
Bobbi looked back at the church again and that’s when she saw something moving on the edge of the roof.
“Mom, why would a devil be on the roof of a church?”
“Probably because they can’t get inside. Hold this bag while mom gets her car keys, alright?”
“Okay.”
While her mother wrestled her other purchases into the backseat, Bobbi looked at the church again. The thing she saw didn’t look like a devil, though. It didn’t have any horns… it did look like its head was on fire, though. She toyed breifly with asking her mom to take a look, but past experience had taught her that grown-ups, even her all-powerful mom, couldn’t see certain things. Like how her friend Troy couldn’t see red and thought it was green, grown up people couldn’t see things like leprechauns, giant bugs or robots unless they were on TV.
“Bobbi! Come on, we need to get to grandpa’s!”
“Coming!”
Bobbi hopped in the car, her bags banging against her knees. She never gave thought to the figure on the church roof again.
***
Cupping the flame against the high altitude wind that ruled above most of the buildings, Odin lit another cigarette. The sun had been hidden behind cloud cover for most of the day, but it wouldn’t really get dark for another hour or so… time to relax while relaxing was an option. The mask on his face opened a crack, making a place for the cigarette to get to his mouth.
While puffing, his hands in his pockets, he began going over in his mind the dichotomies between what the mask was and what it meant. The mask was supposed to be a face, or alternatively, the face itself was a mask. Otherwise he’d be able to just stick the cigarette in the mask and smoke it that way. Then again, some people held the cancer stick with the teeth instead of the lips, some kind of personal preference, and that sort of made the face a mask, like it was supposed to be. They had to get past the fleshy tissue on top, which was a mask for the skull, really. And that was sort of a mask for the brain… okay, a helmet for the brain, but the principle was still solid…
Around and around his mind went, getting nowhere, until he realized it had been dark for at least forty minutes. Odin slid across the roof to the drainpipe and shimmied down a few dozen meters to the vacant lot, seperating the church from Sydney’s Auto Repair.
“Show Time,” he said to nobody.
***
Pausing for breath, Odin evaluated the situation; three men on the ground. Two ran away. For his part, the fingers on his right hand felt broken and he was bleeding from the right shoulder. One of the smarter men had come up to him on the side where it LOOKED like he was blind; the Odin Mask itself looked like the only eyehole was on the left side. While that wasn’t true, he didn’t move fast enough to keep from getting stabbed and his thrusts and jabs were warded off by a trash can lid. Odin filed the man’s face away in his memory for later.
“Hey, you fucking hypocrite! Give that back!”
Odin kicked the kid in the side. Young punk of about seventeen. Probably got tangled up in the gang to be cool, based on his attitude; he clearly expected to be treated better. As the kid grabbed his ribs, Odin continued to riffle through the kid’s wallet. “Turnabout is fair play, shortie. You’d do the same to me and I know you were going to try it on that naive yuppie couple.” A gloved hand peeled some I.D. cards — fake ones — from the wallet, which was entirely devoid of cash except for two pennies and a dime.
He was about to try the next man’s wallet when there was a vibration in his jacket pocket. Odin almost laughed; he was used to the phone going off in the middle of a fight. “Hold on you three, I need to take this call.”
Walking down the alley a short distance and turning to the side of the mask with the visible eyepeice was aimed towards the muggers, he flipped the phone open. “Odin here.”
“Who?”
“Odin. That is what I call myself.”
“You mean that guy the tabloids say runs around like a crazy superhero? You’re kidding me.”
“No, I’m not.”
“This is some kidn of joke, right? I mean, Mr. Grant never said-”
“Jordan Grant of the Jefferson Auditorium?”
“Uh, yeah. He gave me this number in case he was out of town and something came up.”
“We’ve met before. Is there a problem?”
“Well, he told me that if something bad happened to call the number, and I guess he meant you. Funny, he always said you were just sensational fiction or something like that.”
“Naturally. What has happened that you would consider bad?”
“Well, there’s been a murder. On of our actors was shot tonight. There’s blood everywhere, it’s not like in the plays at all.”
“What’s the name of the actor?”
“Josh Scott.”
Odin’s hand tightened on the cell phone. “Could you repeat that name?”
“Josh Scott.”
“Are you absolutely sure?” Odin said as he stared at the reflection in his mask’s eyepeice.
“I’ve known him for three years and we met for coffee almost every other day. I know that’s him, at the police forensics guys will back me up.”
“Alright. I’ll have to talk to Mr. Grant. Forget you ever knew this number.”
Odin clicked off the phone and looked back at the three men, who seemed about ready to take their chances and run off.
“Funny… I don’t FEEL dead.”
***
The apartment only seemed cramped because of its proximity to other apartments in the building, which were littered with old urine-and-vomit stained furniture, newspapers from the late 1800s, and the obligatory old-lady-with-one-thousand-cats. The apartment belonging to the man who was sometimes Josh Scott (or Tim Appleby, or Cecil Thornton), however, was clean, tidy, and incorporated a large number of space-saving features. A lot of Japanese design influence was obvious right from the start.
Odin — except he wasn’t Odin, but Tim Appleby — snuck in through the fire escape, with the Odin Mask hidden in a paper bag, underneath some milk and corn nuts. Once inside, the mask was placed in its appointed spot; a secret compartment built into the back of the kitchenette cupboard. Tim blocked the edge of the cupboard with his arm as it closed to minimize light getting in, or so he told himself. It didn’t make much logical sense, but a lot of things didn’t have much sense lately.
Walking over to a bookcase, he reached behind the books and found a first aid kit. He dropped it on his desk and began the not-so-enjoyable process of dealing with his shoulder and hand. Tim — or Josh, or Cecil, or Odin — was an actor, and an exceptional one. There were good actors, and great actors; good ones never missed their lines and made the show enjoyable to watch, while the great ones made the audience forget that the show was a show, at least until intermission. But there were some actors so good they could make the universe itself forget the show was a show… at least for a while.
Most people didn’t know that was possible, and therefore they didn’t have a word for that kind of talent. But HE did.
The word was Personamancer.
Every time he played a role of some sort, it made him stronger in ways that had nothing to do with muscle or endurance and everything to do with willpower and symbolism. The rush of energy gave an exceptional edge and zeal to his acting without crossing the line into corny; he was hilarious as the stooge, despised as the villain, and loved as the hero; his skill had made the Auditorium quite popular as a place to see plays or opera, even in the days of cable TV, CGI movies and Digital Surround Sound.
This, in turn, made the manager of the Auditorium very happy, because some of the money from the ticket sales would sometimes trickle down into his miserly clutches. To Jordan Grant, Plutomancer Extraordinaire, anybody or anything that helped him earn more money was A-OK.
And it didn’t hurt much that Odin had saved Grant’s life.
Scratching his head and moving back into the kitchenette to make some coffee, Tim tapped his answering machine.
“Hey Tim, we found that book on ceramics you wanted. It’s over fifty years old, but readable. Come down to the library any time you’re ready.”
“Cecil, I’m sorry, but it’s just not working out for me. You’re a great guy, really funny and all, but you never stop being funny. It kind of gets old. You never let your guard down and, frankly, that’s kind of scary. So I think we should see other people.”
“Mr. Thornton, this is Todd down at the firm. We need you to come sign some papers so the sale will be finalized. Preferably sometime tomorrow before the parade.”
“Damnit. Forgot about the parade.”
The last voice was Tim’s – except now he was Josh again, wondering how he could be in more than one place at one time. The principle of multiple names could be confusing or useful depending on the situation, but it still never allowed him to be in more than one place at one time; unlike many Personamancers, he had never made a clone of himself. Too messy.
Somebody down at the theater had gotten shot, while looking like him, which meant that unless he wanted a lot of unwanted attention, he had to stop being Josh until he figured out what was going on.
Josh looked around at the apartment and noted a few details that would have to be changed; there was only one futon for sleeping, but at least two men were supposed to live here; three if you went by the mail that was forwarded. That would have to change.
As the coffee maker beeped that the coffee was done, the phone started up again.
“Tim. This is Jordan. If you’re there, pick up. It’s important.”
Uh oh.
Josh grabbed the phone and clicked it on. “This is Tim. What’s up?”
“Tim?” There was a slight pause on the other end. “Josh is dead.”
“…what?”
“Josh is dead.”
“…How did it happen?”
“Gunshot wound. He was in the green room and somebody just…”
“This doesn’t make any sense. Who’d want to kill Josh?”
“I second that motion. The police are going to want to talk to you of course.”
“Right.”
“Afterwards, we need to meet for beers. I know I need one.”
“Same here. Thanks for letting me know, Jordan.”
“No Problem.”
The line clicked off and Tim jumped into a flurry of activity, making the apartment look like two people lived in it. The message was saturated with hidden codes and messages; the entire situation on Jordan’s end had the words “SOMEBODY IS SETTING YOUR ASS UP” stamped on it.
Accidentally crushing a broken finger between a shelf and another futon, Tim cursed and tried crossing the unbroken fingers, hoping against all odds that he wouldn’t break them until after New Years Day.
To Be Continued…