==========
We’ve seen many examples of people who’ve said “enough” and proceeded to take matters into their own hands. Sometimes they’re hailed as heroes, sometimes they’re damned as villains. Usually the only difference is… spin.
Weiser is the name, public relations is the game.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d heard of me, seeing as how, for a humble press flack, I’m pretty well known. I was lucky enough to be the first victim he ever rescued, just about three months ago, when he revealed his existence to the world. But a guy in ray line of work takes it where he can get it. Usually, the p. r. guy humps along quietly in the background, aggressively selling his clients to the people who can get their names before the public while keeping the lowest personal profile possible for himself. But since this all fell into my lap, I’d have been a schmuck not to take advantage of it. See, the way I figured it, the better my face is known, the easier it is for me to get my foot in the door and, by extension, my client’s names into the newspapers and their smiling faces on the TV talk shows. Talk about understatements. Being a public figure in my own right gave me instant credibility with the publicity suckers who control the media. Celebs trust fellow celebs. They believe everybody else wants something from them, which is usually the case, but closer to insight than I generally like giving these people credit for. Doors open for a guy whose name is followed by the label “Ultima’s best friend.”
Of course, we’re not really best friends. Or any kind of friends for that matter, sure as hell not the “pals” the tabloids have us pegged as. At best, we can be called acquaintances. Business acquaintances, at that. Sure, I owed him for what he’d done for me, saving my ass the way he did, but I like to think I’ve more than returned the favor for that over the last couple of months. Now, I do a job for him, and we both got what we needed out of the relationship without the bother of a friendship mucking up the arrangement. Me, a guaranteed table at Elaine’s, more high-profile clients, and a big, juicy bank account, and Ultima, publicity that kept John Q. Public from finding out what kind of a monster he really was.
Since when does reality have anything to do with public relations?
==========
“Where do I come from? You know I can’t tell you who I really am, right? Nobody knows that. Nobody can ever know, otherwise I’d never have a moment’s peace for the world camping out on my doorstep, wanting me to do for them. Or wanting to do me harm for what I’ve done when I’m off my guard, being who I really am when I’m not being Ultima. So for our purposes, I’m just Ultima, that’s it, okay?
“Sounds pretty silly, I know. I guess the strangest thing to realize is that the role models for what I am come from comic books. Except the world’s not like comic books. The real world doesn’t need me, not the way they’d need me if I were a comk’book hero in a comk’book world, fighting the hordes of bizarre and powerful comic-book villains populating those pulp realities. There, when I punched someone, I wouldn’t take their head off. My blow would send them smashing through a wall, but they’d always get right back up and come at me again. In the funny books, people like me aren’t murderers.
“Uhm…
“Maybe you don’t want to use that part in the book, jack.”
==========
Three months ago…
I’d spent most of my life avoiding working for a living. I started by spending six years in college, drifting between a variety of majors and interests until the scholarships ran out and my parents were fed up supporting me. The last major I’d absolutely, positively committed my academic energies to the semester I left school was journal‘ ism, so, on my own and without the comfortable cushion of parental financial support, I worked up a fake resume that would have been impressive for someone twice my age and applied to every newspaper in the New York metropolitan area. I was just young and cocky enough to expect a personnel manager to fall for it. I was lucky enough to find one gullible enough to do just that and landed a gig on The New York Daily Press, a tabloid with a marginal regard for integrity and enough advertising revenue not to have to worry about it.
I’d stepped into something too good to be true for a know-nothing, inexperienced kid of twenty-four. All I had to do to sustain the gig was be reasonably competent at my job. Only problem was, I sucked big time at straight, honest reporting. So big that I couldn’t hack it at a newspaper where hacking was the minimum daily requirement for collecting a paycheck. When it came to the concept of writing the facts and just the facts, I missed the point. I had a tendency to dress up a story, add a little pizzazz when I felt the facts were dragging down the truth. Even at the less than journalistically pure Press, making up the news, even selected bits and pieces of the news, was frowned upon. The city editor tried to get me to see the light, but I was young and a major butthead to boot and wouldn’t see the error of my ways.
In short, I was fired.
But my nine months on the paper taught me two things. Number one, I really hated punching a time clock and working for a boss.
And number two, a few strategically placed contacts could alleviate the necessity of number one.
For reasons having more to do with a drunken office Christmas party encounter in a dark stairwell than any indication of real ability on my part, the Press’s gossip columnist, excuse me, social reporter Dayle Schuyler, took a liking to me. “Public relations, doll.” She winked at me when I stopped by her office with my belongings in a box under my arm to inform her of my termination on my way out of the building. “I bet you’d simply shine at p. r. And besides,” she said, leaning forward with elbows on her desk and breasts pressed between upper arms to show an abundance of middle-aged cleavage, “with a little help from your friends, you shouldn’t have trouble placing items and impressing prospective clients.”
Dayle winked again.
I took the hint. Dayle set me up with a couple of contacts and placed a batch of items in her column and the columns of her fellow gossipmongers. A rising lounge singer here. A struggling stand-up comedian there. An up-and-coming starlet. A corporate executive considering public office. A local TV talk show host looking to syn-dicate his program nationally. One by one, little by little, the client list grew. Not that I was getting rich, but I was making a living and, for a guy three years into a career in a risky profession, I figured I was doing reasonably okay. By working twenty, twenty-five hours a week tops, I was bringing home bacon enough to keep a roof over my head, pay my bills, and indulge in sufficient wine, women, and song to keep any young man happy.
That’s about where I was at three months ago, on the night of my twenty-eighth birthday to be exact. I’d spent the evening with a group of friends in a Greenwich Village club, drinking a succession of toasts to my birthday, our health, one another, the bartender, our waitress… just about anybody or anything that moved. By 2 A.M. closing time when the party broke up, I was sauced beyond all reasonable expectations of remaining conscious. But you know how it is, the drunker you are, the deeper into denial you get, so I staggered off on my own to find a cab to take my snockered butt back home to Brooklyn thinking I was fine. Just fine.
I wasn’t. I took a wrong turn somewhere and wound up in the warehouse district over by the West Side Highway. There’s not a lot going on over there at that hour. Even the hookers and junkies who took over the area after dark had pretty much called it quits by then.
But not the muggers. At least not the three sleaze-buckets who came at me from an alleyway, oozing out from behind a parked truck cab, probably just lying in wait for a drunk like me to roll. I tripped to a halt as they blocked the sidewalk, too drunk to figure out what was happening right off.
“Give it up,” one of them said to me, holding out his hand.
I smiled like the zonked-out goon I was and waited, swaying in the wind. “He’s wasted,” the second one said.
“Cool,” said number three. “Makes it easy.”
That’s when I saw the baseball bat in the first guy’s hand. The tire iron gripped by the second. Number three had a gun, and when he lifted his arm with the barrel sticking out of his fist and at my face, reality cut through my alcoholic haze: I was being held up.
Number one smiled a greasy, nasty smile and took a step towards me, hefting the bat like he was stepping up to the plate to bash out a homer. Only it was my head that was about to go flying over the center-field fence. I knew I was supposed to duck, but I couldn’t move near fast enough as the bat whizzed past my head, cracking alongside my left temple and sending me to the pavement like a discarded paper cup. Number one laughed. He was enjoying himself something fierce, no doubt about that, but his buddy with the tire iron wanted to play too, and that cost me a busted rib and a bruise that took two weeks to heal.
In those couple of seconds between the first blow with the bat and number three aiming the gun at me again, I found instant sobriety and the realization I was about to die.
And that’s when he came.
From the sky, like he’d jumped from the roof above to land between me and the three thugs, only he came down as soft and as easy as a feather. He hadn’t jumped. He flew down.
Flew freakin' down!
Okay, I figured I was seeing things, a whack to the head on top of about a dozen straight Stolis will do that. A guy, looking to be about nine feet tall from my vantage point close to the ground, wearing midnight blue spandex tights and a black leather tunic jacket with the collar turned up, boots and gloves, a black cowllike mask covering his face from the nose up, swooping down from the sky like a saving grace from heaven above.
The muggers took a step back from him, no more sure of what to make of this guy than was I. But he knew what he was doing; at least he gave the impression, and I was in no position to question anything he did in the next eight seconds.
The first second his hand shot out and closed around the gun.
Second two: the startled mugger pulled the trigger as the man in spandex squeezed. Even over the sharp retort of the firing gun, I heard the screech of bending, twisting metal, the crackle of breaking bone and the mugger’s pained gasp as the costumed man crushed gun and flesh together.
Three: my savior pulled back his hand, fingers clenched into a fist, then snapped it around, backhanding the gun-wielding thug across the face. His head snapped around with the crack of more breaking bones.
Four: as the first man crumbled to the ground, the one with the bat started swinging on the masked man. His forearm swept up to block the Louisville slugger, which snapped like a twig against his arm.
Five: the man’s fist shot out, straight as an arrow, into the bat guy’s face, striking hard enough to send a spray of blood splattering from the point of impact. I later learned that the single blow shattered the mugger’s skull like an eggshell. Meanwhile, the last mugger was in mid-swing with his tire iron for the back of the masked man’s head.
Six: the tire iron wrapped around the man’s head… literally wrapped around it, bending around his skull like a piece of flexible wire instead of a length of iron. The man grinned at that, amused by the mugger’s sudden realization of fear. He reached up and snatched the bent iron from the other man’s grasp.
In the final two seconds, he grabbed the last man before he could run away and, with one hand, wrapped the bent tire iron around the mugger’s neck. And then twisted it, tight, like a twist tie around a Baggie. The mugger gasped and, eyes bulging, went down to his knees, fingers clawing desperately, futilely at the twisted loop of iron choking the life out of him.
But the costumed man was no longer interested in him. He turned to me and knelt down, smiling, dark eyes blazing through the eyeholes of his mask. “Are you all right, sir?” he asked, speaking for the first time since alighting to save me.
“Uhhh…” was the best I could manage for the moment.
Behind him, the last mugger gave out a final, horrible gurgle and toppled to the sidewalk.
My eyes went wide at that, and he looked back over his shoulder at the dead man. “He won’t be bothering you anymore. None of them will ever victimize anyone again.”
He really talked that way, like some pompous heroic figure out of a bad movie. Some counterpoint to his having just casually murdered three people in cold blood while I watched, huh? It was too much irony for me to deal with right then and there.
“I… uh… thanks… I guess,” I stammered. I wasn’t sure he was finished killing. Fact was, he was just getting started, but people like me were safe with him. He always chose his victims from a very select group of individuals: criminals.
“Just doing my job,” he said modestly. “You appear to be in need of medical attention. I’ll have the police send an ambulance.”
I nodded, feeling a sharp twist of pain from where the bat had met my head, and realized I was bleeding. But even with the hurt in my head and ribs, I knew I had something here so, as he straightened up to leave, to fly away, I shouted, “Wait!”
He looked at me. “Yes?”
“Who are you? I… I mean, what should I call you?”
He smiled at that. “I don’t know yet. I’ve been debating that question myself.” He shrugged. “I mean, do you think I really need a name? Like Zorro, or the Scarlet Pimpernel?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. Was I really having this conversation? “People’re gonna have to call you something.”
He looked at me, thoughtful, for long seconds. “What’s your name?”
“Weiser,” I said. “Jack Weiser.” I managed to pull myself into a sitting position, ignoring the pain in my side for the time being. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a business card.
He looked at it and smiled. “A publicist?”
I nodded.
“Then maybe you have a suggestion.”
And then he lifted up into the sky, looking every bit like a movie special effect. Only there was no crane and wires to haul him skyward for the camera. He did it under his own steam.
He was really flying.
This guy was the ultimate human being. Ultimate man… Ultima. Had a nice ring to it. At least it sounded good to me at the time, when I told the cops what had happened. Of course, by then the paramedics had given me something for the pain and I was well on my way to lightheaded.
But the name stuck. Ultima didn’t seem to mind.
==========
“I’ve always been different, as far back as I can recall. And before. There are family members who would tell how my mother bragged that I never cried, that I never needed to cry because she would always know what I needed, when I needed it, almost as soon as I myself knew it. The other mothers, she said, were always jealous of the close bond between us, almost as though we could read one another’s minds.
“That wasn’t quite true, although they were on the right track. While I can’t provide you with a scientific explanation… there’s so little anyone knows about these matters… suffice it to say I was born with certain psychic abilities. Powers of the mind. As an infant and child, these abilities manifested themselves in a very basic manner, creating a silent link between myself and my mother. She could, on some level, hear my needs as I had them, reading the thoughts that I was able to broadcast as some sort of primal reflex. No one else heard these thoughts.
“I can only assume that her ability to know what I was thinking came about through the natural bond between mother and child, that instinct through which a mother recognizes her child’s cry and the child its mother’s touch. In no other way have I ever exhibited any sort of telepathic ability.
“When I was old enough to move beyond that, when I was finally able to start articulating my needs, my abilities began manifesting themselves in other ways, as in my enhanced strength and speed, et cetera. They’re all, so to speak, in my mind. You could run every conceivable physical examination you wished on me and detect nothing whatsoever different or unusual in my physiological makeup. Everything I do, I do with my mind.
“What do I remember about my mother?
“Not much. She died when I was three years old. Of a brain hemorrhage. Why do you ask?”
==========
Ultima’s premiere performance left me up to my armpits in trouble, sprawled bloodied and dazed in one of Manhattan’s seedier neighborhoods with three brutally murdered corpses for company. Under the best of circumstances, the N.Y.P.D. hates setups like that, but add a story about a costumed flying perpetrator to the mix and they get downright ornery towards the idiot who tells the tale. Especially when his blood alcohol scores higher than his I.Q.
The cops couldn’t decide whether to book me for murder, ship me over to Bellevue for observation, or just toss me into the deepest, darkest cell they had in the 10th precinct and leave me there until I was sober and could come up with a better story. I can’t say I wasn’t sympathetic; if I hadn’t seen it happen myself, I would’ve doubted my own story. As it was, even while I was having my head sewn closed by a doctor in the emergency room of St. Vincent’s, I figured I really should have been having it examined from the inside out instead.
A flying man. Killing blows. Solid iron bending around a human skull.
Yeah. Right.
The detective investigating the case was called out of the room to take a phone call in the middle of his interrogation, which was still taking place while the doc taped up my dinged ribs. Just my luck, I remember thinking; a few more bodies had probably been dropped on the pile and, since I already had those first three stiffs, I wouldn’t mind a few more. But then Sgt. Jepson came back into the examination room, his previously ruddy complexion now as white as the bandages circling my ribs.
He started to speak, or at least he tried. All that came out at first was a series of unintelligible grunts and squeaks. He finally caught himself, cleared his throat, and said, “You can go when the doc’s done with you, Mr. Weiser.”
“I can?” That was news. A few minutes earlier, he was about ready to hang me, forget about gracing me with the “mister” in front of my surname. Now I was being told to split with all the respect due a sober, taxpaying citizen.
“Uh’huh. We got your statement.” Jepson was distracted by whatever it was he’d been told on the phone. I had a feeling I knew what it was, that my story’d been somehow verified, otherwise no way in hell would he have let me walk out of there. But for my own peace of mind, I needed to hear it from him.
“Then I’m not a suspect:”‘
Jepson shook his head, chewing on the inside of his cheek and looking at me like I was from another planet. “Not even close.”
“Don’t think I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth, Sergeant, but why the change of heart?”
He didn’t want to answer, probably because once he said it, he’d have to believe it, and that was out of the question. But I was asking, and he was better off practicing saying it to me than trying it out cold on his superiors. “Because, Mr. Weiser,” he said, with just this side of a sigh, “of the two calls I just took. The first was the preliminary report from the forensic field investigators confirming a situation having taken place that pretty much matches your story.”
“No kidding?”
“Why’re you so surprised?”
I shrugged. “Relieved is more like it. So what else?”
“Your flying man… what’d you call him?”
“Ultima,” I said.
“Yeah, him… you sure that’s what he said his name is?”
“Well, no. He didn’t exactly have a name, so when I asked what I should call him, he said I should come up with something.”
Jepson stared at me. I shrugged and grinned a lot like the idiot I was feeling. “What can I tell you?”
The sergeant ran his hand through his disheveled black hair and shook his head. “Man, am I supposed to believe any of this? I don’t care what that loon calls himself, okay? He’s real… about half an hour after your run-in with him, he showed up on the FDR Drive and ran interference for some of our cars chasing down two perps in a high-speed pursuit.”
“Did he… y’know… was he driving or did he, uhm… ?”
“Fly. The son of a bitch flew. We got half a dozen cops who eyeballed the whole thing. So, you’re in the clear, Weiser. Put your shirt on, go home, and we’ll be in touch if we need anything else from you.”
He stalked out of the examining room without another word. I had to call one of my old pals on the Press to get the lowdown on Ultima’s encore.
Two punks had jumped a guy as he was coming away from an automated teller machine, took his wallet, watch, and rings, shot him in the stomach, and then took off in his two-year-old Olds-mobile at something like sixty miles per hour. The first patrol car picked them up as they sped up York Avenue and tried to pull them over. That trick didn’t work and the punks took their show onto the FDR at 63rd Street, where two more cop cars joined the chase. The Oldsmobile wasn’t stopping for anything or anyone, at least not until Ultima flew in and landed smack-dab in front of it.
They were just going to run him down, leave him as a red smear on the pavement, but how were they supposed to know there was a real live superhero in town? The car hit him going better than eighty. It might as well have hit a brick wall.
The front end accordioned against Ultima and went from eighty to zero in that split-second. The punk doing the driving wound up with the steering wheel punching through his chest and died instantly. The other one wasn’t so lucky. He went through the windshield and landed behind Ultima. The cops caught up with what was left of the Olds by then and they reported that Ultima was ready to leave at that point, but that the punk had kept hold of his gun even with his trip through the windshield and was still conscious and feeling hostile towards the guy who’d wrecked his brand-new car. He took a few shots at Ultima, hitting him, the two cops on the scene swore, at least twice before the masked man turned on him and kicked the gun from his hand. He was reaching for him by the time the cops had drawn their guns and used the punk for target practice. Scored a couple of bull’s eyes, too. The punk died on the spot from the gunshot wounds.
The cops had absolutely no idea what to make of Ultima, so they kept their guns trained on him while they called for him to drop to the pavement. Ultima smiled at them, tossed off a salute in their direction, and then lifted up into the sky and flew away. The cops were way too stunned by that bit of business to do anything but watch him disappear into the dark of night.
There were three other fatal incidents involving Ultima that night with five more thieves and two rapists buying the big one at the hands of the world’s first real superhero. There was also a major five-alarm fire in a Bronx tenement that he put in an appearance at, rescuing seven residents trapped by the flames. The firefighters and onlookers on the scene cheered him like he’d single-handedly won the World Series for the Mets. The next morning, pictures on the news programs and in the papers of Ultima rescuing a frightened three-year-old girl and her kitten from the burning tenement overshadowed the news of the eleven dead at his hands. He’d caught one hell of a break with that fire, that’s for sure, but it must have made obvious to Ultima what I’d figured out within minutes of our first meeting:
He needed someone to handle p. r. for him something fierce!
==========
“You know about the flying, of course. To tell the truth, I don’t know exactly how I do that. It’s not like I flap my arms or anything. I just think about flying and it happens, I take off. I don’t know how fast I go, I’ve never actually clocked myself, although I once kept pace with a commercial airliner for several miles.
“I’m very strong. I can smash solid steel the way an ordinary man might crush a soda pop can. And you know about the time I battered my way through a concrete bunker wall to get to that kidnapped child. That took a bit of effort, though. The concrete was about a foot thick and I had to beat on it for a good minute or so.
“Which would have been quite painful, if I felt pain when I’m active. Well, no, actually, that’s not quite right. I can feel pain, it just takes more than the usual things to get to me. Invulnerable‘! Not exactly, although when I’m being Ultima and sensitized to danger, I’m fairly close to it. Otherwise, I can stub my toe just like anybody else. Otherwise, bullets can’t penetrate my skin, but they will leave bruises. Fortunately, I heal rather quickly, although I wouldn’t like to have to go head’to’head with, say, a mortar shell.
“What else can I do? You’ve seen it, Jack. Sometimes, I don’t know my own strength. What more do you need to know?”
==========
After that first night, Ultima was all anyone talked about. The things he’d done had, prior to his appearance, been the stuff of big‘ budget movies, cheap TV shows, the comic books. Now it was real, page one, top of the program, Jay’s Dave’s lead joke news. The talk shows quickly booked scientists denying the possibility of Ultima’s existence or trying to explain how his powers worked. The Court TV cable channel hosted a roundtable of experts discussing the legality of his actions. The State’s Attorney got busy looking into whether Ultima could be indicted even as the mayor’s office tried to track him down to give him the key to the city. The Police Commissioner issued a loud “no comment” but quietly instructed his officers to bring Ultima in, not for questioning, of course, but for a discussion on his tactics and intentions. Mister Rogers went on PBS stations to tell kids not to be afraid of superheroes, they were your best pals in the neighborhood, and the Fox Network announced its desire to enter into negotiations with Ultima or his representatives for a brand-new series of cartoon adventures based on his life.
Ultima was hot.
He was hero, he was villain. He was an enigma, he was the answer to New York’s prayers. He was a saint, he was a devil in leather and spandex.
He was a publicist’s dream.
He was a million bucks waiting to be pocketed.
I made sure I got my name in the papers posthaste, again courtesy of my friend at the Press. The other New York papers and wire services picked up quick on the story of Ultima’s first rescue and pretty soon I was looking frequently at my own face on the local and network news, talking the man up big time. Sliced bread? Penicillin? Open-heart surgery? Give me a break, all second-rate next to Ultima. I’d be humbled just to have the opportunity to thank him, in person, naturally. Just us, me and him, face to face.
So I could pitch a deal for my services, services he was going to need bad if his first night on the town was any indication of how things were going to be.
The next night, and the night following it, Ultima was just as busy as he’d been on the first one, appearing all over the city to rescue people from crime, disasters, and their own stupidity. Even people inclined to attribute the stories to a hoax or some bizarre mass hysterical reaction were starting to buy into Ultima’s existence. People who felt they’d long ago had to abandon the streets of the city to the criminal element applauded his actions. Civil libertarians were aghast at the body count Ultima was toting up.
All I kept seeing was a business opportunity passing me by.
Then, on Ultima’s fourth night, I got my wish when he showed up at my window.
At the time, I was living and working out of a third-floor apartment in a Park Slope, Brooklyn brownstone. It was close to midnight and I’d just turned off the television after taping my appearance on Nightline where Koppel and I had been discussing the rise of urban vigilantism. There was a tapping at my living-room window, which I assumed, since the fire escape was outside the bedroom window on the other side of the building, to be from a tree branch or a loose cable wire blown by the wind. But when I glanced towards the window, I saw a face.
Wearing a mask.
As much as I wanted to talk to Ultima, I assumed he’d pick up the phone and call me. Or show up at my front door. Sure as hell not at my freaking window at midnight, giving me what, at twenty-eight, I just knew was what a heart attack was going to feel like. With my heart still thumping like bongos in my chest, I unlatched and opened the window.
“I understand you wanted to speak to me, Mr. Weiser,” he said. Oh, yeah. I should mention he was hovering outside the window, hanging suspended in mid-air. As often as I’d see him over the next few months, the flying was the hardest thing to get used to.
“Yeah,” I stammered. “I did… I mean, I do. Uh… how’d you know where to find me?”
He held up the business card I’d given him three nights ago. “You gave me your address.”
“Right.” I nodded. I’d rehearsed what I wanted to say to him a hundred times over the last few days, but now, face to face, with him standing on nothing outside my window, I lost it. “Look, mister… eh, Ultima. Do you mind? I mean, the name? It was the best I could do on the spur of the moment.”
“Actually, it’s a bit much.” He shrugged. “But it seems -to have stuck. I can live with it.”
“Great. Great,” I said. Lame.
“Well, Mr. Weiser, if there’s nothing else… ?”
“No!” I took a step forward, reaching towards him. “Don’t go yet. I’ve got to talk to you, okay?”
“If you want to thank me, there’s really no need. I don’t do this for gratitude.”
“Why do you do it?”
“Because,” he said and smiled, “I can.”
“Yeah, okay, that’s all well and good, but I’ve got to tell you, man, you’re… look, Ultima, you want to come inside? Take a load off your… your whatever you use to fly?”
He was still smiling as he floated in through my window and settled on the floor. I think my reaction, which was probably a whole lot like your average six-year-old seeing Peter Pan fly for the first time, amused the hell out of him.
“Now then, Mr. Weiser, what can I do for you?”
“Actually, it’s what I can do for you, uh… Ultima.” It sounded goony to call a grown man that, but I had nobody except myself to blame for it.
Ultima looked at me, waiting.
“Okay, look, you know I’m a publicist, right? The way I figure it, I’m just the kind of guy you need.”
“That seems awfully, I don’t know… commercial. I’m not an actor or politician.”
“Right. You’re a vigilante. A superhero, something no one’s ever seen before,” I said, talking fast. “Well, let me tell you, Ultima, you plan on being different, you need someone to put the right spin on that difference for you. You’re different and people, even the bad guys, wind up, you know… well, dying because of what you do; you need to have the rest of the world told what you want it to be told before it draws its own conclusions.”
He nodded and stroked his chin in thought.
I hurried on. “You see it happening already, right? Some of the press is starting to make noise about the cops getting you off the street.”
“They can’t,” he said simply, stating a fact of life.
“You don’t have to tell me, man. I’ve seen you in action, but whether or not they can isn’t the issue. If the cops give in to the pressure and start getting in your face, it’s going to make doing your job a hell of a lot tougher than it already is.
“But get public opinion cooking on your side, pal, and there’s nothing the cops’ll be able to do to you. If this whole killing’the-bad-guy thing grabs hold with the public and they become afraid of you, you’re lost. But set yourself up as a hero, their hero, and you’re golden.”
“I only kill the ones who resist,” he said. “If they cease their aggressive behavior and surrender, I have no reason to hurt them.”
I nodded vigorously. “Exactly! And that’s what we’ve got to play up for the public. Right now you’re a mystery man, a spooky guy in a mask.” I paused, uncomfortable about bringing up the subject but deciding, what the hell, it was going pretty good, let me go for broke. “Speaking of the mask, Ultima, the whole costume, in fact… it looks kind of thrown together. Makeshift, if you catch my drift.”
Ultima caught it, looking down at the leather-and-spandex concoction he had on. “It is.”
“We can do better. You know, brighter, friendlier. Then I’ll need some good pictures of you wearing it. And video. Is it okay if I arrange an interview for you? Something high profile, Mike Wallace, Ted Koppel, like that? That way you only have to do one, two tops, to get the maximum exposure.”
Ultima was starting to smile now, watching me as I paced the room, working up ideas, spitting them out as fast as they came to mind.
“Is that all?” he asked finally, when I had gotten around to the subject of him and the covers of the news weeklies.
I stopped cold. “You just humoring me?”
He shook his head. “No, actually, much of what you say makes sense, Mr. Weiser.”
I smiled. “Call me Jack. What should I call you?”
“Ultima will do just fine, Jack.”
“Right. Look, I don’t care who you really are. I mean, that’s your business. So, okay, I make sense. But… ?”
“But I think we should take it one step at a time. The costume, the pictures, those are fine. But I need to think about anything beyond that.”
“Gotcha.” I nodded. “This is new territory for both of us. Okay, let me get started with the costume. I know a designer who can help. I’ll get some sketches done up and get back to you with them.
“Uhhh… how do I get back to you?”
“I’ll be in touch with you,” he said. “The same time and place tomorrow night all right with you?”
“That’s another thing you might want to think about, Ultima. This whole night thing of yours? Makes you look like a stalker. Says vampire to me. Any chance of showing yourself during the day?”
“Well, perhaps on the weekend,” he said, thoughtful.
I must have looked confused because he smiled again.
“I work during the day, Jack. I have to pay rent and eat, you know.”
==========
“I spent most of life hiding my abilities. I was, I think, afraid of what I could do because I didn’t understand it. How could I? I was different, strange, some sort of bizarre mutation beyond understanding. I realized, of course, that I needn’t have been afraid of anybody who might have had problems with the fact of my abilities. I was stronger, smarter, faster than anyone I knew, but that wasn’t what I was afraid of. It was the mere fact of my difference. Children and teenagers want to fit in with their peers, not be singled out for being different. Certainly not for being some sort of freak.
“I was in college the first time I allowed myself to use any of my abilities in public. A girl and I were walking across campus late one night when two thugs jumped out at us from the bushes. I don’t know what they wanted, whether it was my wallet or her… well, her. Either way, they meant one or both of us harm, so I didn’t have any choice, really. I stopped them from hurting us, which meant hurting them instead, rather badly, I’m afraid. We left them there after I was done and never once did the girl imagine that I was anything other than a normal boy who reacted out of fear in a normal way. She went on about the effects of adrenaline on a person under stress, you see?
“She never once stopped to think that there was anything even remotely abnormal about me because she had no other expectations. There was no such thing as a ‘superhuman’ in her, or anyone else’s, realm of expectation, so it never occurred to her to believe I was out of the ordinary.
“I was the only one who knew I was different, so I was the only one who would have known what to look for.
“After that, I realized that I could relax some. If no one was looking for a superman, no one would know what one looked like or how one acted.
“It’s only lately that I’ve ruined that for myself. Now I’ve got to be careful in my… well, in my secret identity. Lord, does that sound as ridiculously pretentious as I think it does?”
==========
That’s how Ultima, the super human, became my client.
I had my costume designer friend whip up some sketches, but nothing really clicked. Everything he did came out looking like a Broadway version of a superhero by way of Liberace. In desperation, I hoofed it over to the local comic-book store on Seventh Avenue and asked around for an aspiring comic-book artist looking to make a quick few bucks. There was an eighteen-year-old with a sketchpad browsing through the latest releases who was happy to oblige and, ten minutes later, in exchange for fifty bucks and a hastily scrawled signed release relinquishing any future claims to the costume, I left the store with what I needed.
In between doing what he did—I hadn’t yet started to force myself to use superhero jargon, like “crimefighting duties” and “nightly patrol” that I would adopt for public statements—Ultima stopped by my window that night and approved the design and left me with his measurements. Bright and early the next morning I was at a tailor shop picking out fabrics and promising the world to the old man if he would deliver the finished product in forty-eight hours.
Meanwhile, Ultima continued to dominate the news and public mind of the city and the country. He was out there every night, stopping crimes, rescuing damsels and dudes in distress, and mounting an awesome death toll. For the most part, he remained true to his word, didn’t often inflict more damage than was necessary to subdue a felon. If they resisted, even in the slightest, they were dead men, but if they stopped, dropped their weapons, and hit the ground in surrender, they’d live to be led away in handcuffs instead of riding an ambulance in a body bag. That’s not to say he didn’t occasionally get carried away or fail to pull a punch in time, but in the heat of those tense moments, most happening faster than victim or surviving perpetrator could follow, it was hard to really pin anything on him.
I called a press conference for the Saturday morning after Ultima’s costume was ready. I got a lot of skepticism from the assignment editors I contacted, and the turnout was piss-poor considering what I was promising, but that would be the last time one of my announcements was ignored—because from that day on, I was the man who could not only promise but actually deliver Ultima.
Pretty cool, huh?
The conference was for noon, on the open Long Meadow in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, leaving Ultima plenty of room for a dramatic entrance.
A dozen print journalists, two camera crews from local stations, and one radio reporter were all we drew to the lush, green lawn. I welcomed them, thanked them for coming, spoke a few words about how the world of fantasy had finally met up with real life with an honest-to-god superhuman who’d come to take on the bad guys for those of us who couldn’t fight back on our own. Ladies and gentlemen…
Ultima!
He came floating down from the sky, resplendent in his new duds. Camcorders whirred, still cameras clicked like locusts on autowinders, and everybody gasped at the sight of Ultima, clad head to toe in a yellow, formfitting bodysuit, his mask leaving his eyes and the lower half of his face exposed. Black leather gloves and boots covered his hands and feet, a waist-length black leather jacket was buttoned at the waist, and on his chest the piece de resistance, a stylized black “U” set against a diamond-shaped field of crimson.
They gasped. They gaped. I think the radio reporter wet himself. I was loving every second of it.
Ultima landed beside me, gentle as a leaf, smiling at the reporters like everybody’s best friend. They didn’t wait for his feet to touch the ground before they started shouting questions at him.
I managed to get their attention long enough to say that Ultima wouldn’t be taking any questions himself but that I, as his representative, would be happy to help them. Who was Ultima? Where did he come from? Why was he doing this? Was he working with the police? On and on and on, talking to me but keeping their cameras on Ultima, who stood with arms folded heroically across his chest, smiling but staying mute like I’d instructed.
We gave the press fifteen minutes and then Ultima waved farewell, thanked them for coming, and lifted off into the sky, more shouted questions trailing after him. It took me another half-hour to finish the reporters off and send them on their way to file stories to their hearts’ content. It couldn’t have gone any better and I couldn’t have been more up, and seeing police detective Sgt. Jepson lounging at the entrance to the park I was leaving through, smoking a cigarette, didn’t darken my mood.
“Yo, Sergeant.” I smiled. “Should’ve come to the press conference. I could’ve introduced you to Ultima.”
“That’s okay, Mr. Weiser,” he said, grinding the half-smoked cigarette under the toe of his scuffed shoe. “I don’t have to meet him. Something tells me we don’t have a whole hell of a lot in common anyway.”
“You sure? He’s a nice guy.”
Jepson looked at me through narrowed eyes. He wasn’t a happy camper. “He’s a murderer, Mr. Weiser.”
I shook my head and wagged a finger in his direction. “Correction. He’s a hero.”
“Working ahead of a string of corpses isn’t my idea of a hero.”
“To each his own, Sergeant. Was there something you wanted from me?”
“Nothing official,” Jepson said, then turned his eyes to scan the sky above. “Look, Weiser, you see this Ultima goon as a meal ticket, but I don’t think you know exactly what it is you’ve latched onto. In six nights, he’s killed forty-seven people…”
“Any innocent bystanders in there?”
“No,” he said. “All of them were in the process of committing one felony or another. But that’s not the point, at least not the way I see it. This guy’s set himself up as judge, jury, and executioner for the criminal element, all on his own volition. Hell, I’m an employee of the city and I don’t have that sort of authority, so who appointed him?”
“If he’s done something wrong, why didn’t you bust him when you had the chance?”
Jepson gave a sour little laugh. “Right, like he’s gonna come along peacefully just because we ask nice.”
“Not to mention that you guys”—I smirked—“wouldn’t want to look bad by getting your asses kicked by Ultima in front of the press.”
“What would be the point? The D.A.”s looking into pressing charges, but there’s no paper out on him yet and until there is, we don’t have anything official to bring him in for, forcibly or otherwise.“
“Then why the visit, Sergeant?”
“Doesn’t mean we wouldn’t like to talk to him, unofficially, if he’d come in on his own.”
“Just to talk?”
Jepson shrugged. “The department wouldn’t mind knowing what his intentions are.”
“Not that we’ve discussed this or anything, but Ultima doesn’t seem to have any interest in talking with you guys.”
“He’s gonna have to, sooner or later.”
I laughed. “I’ve got to tell you, Sergeant, from what I’ve seen, that man doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do.”
Jepson pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and started to shake one loose. “Sooner or later,” he said, “we all wind up doing things we don’t want.”
For a cop, he knew a good exit line when he spoke it. He walked towards his car, parked at the curb. I guess I was supposed to stop and think about what he’d said, feel remorse for consorting with a monster like Ultima.
Guess again.
==========
“Why now? I’ve spent my entire life up until now just like everybody else. I often thought that I should somehow capitalize on my powers. I mean, why work so hard when I had these abilities that could earn me a small fortune with minimal effort?
“But it shouldn’t work that way. At least, I don’t believe it should. Obviously, if I was given these powers, it was for a reason. God doesn’t hand out such gifts for no reason.
“That sounds pompous, I suppose. I know I’m not the most easygoing man in the world, but I can’t help being who I am, the way I am. I never asked to be some sort of superman, but I’ve tried to live with it the best I can. Just knowing what I was capable of shaped me into the man I am today,
“Do you believe in destiny? I know I do, I suppose I have to, all things considered.
“I’m sorry, Jack. What was the question?”
==========
The next month was a nonstop blur. Ultima was everywhere, including the cover of Newsweek, which, I think, impressed him, but he played things too close to the vest for me to be sure. But it didn’t matter, not with the way things were going. Ultima kept fragging bad guys, the cops kept trying to find a reason to go after him, but a public opinion poll in that same issue of Newsweek indicated that some sixty-seven percent of those polled agreed with Ultima’s methods. People were fed up with surrendering their streets to crime, sick of the legalities that kept the cops from landing on criminals with both feet, tired of a judiciary with its system of revolving-door justice that put murderers and rapists back on the streets as fast as the cops could pick them up.
People were afraid, and Ultima offered relief from the fear.
Any authority looking to prevent Ultima from doing that risked, at best, having public opinion turn against them or a reelection yanked out from under them and, at worst, a lynching.
Besides, Ultima was having an effect on New York. The crime rate, in general, was plummeting as the bad guys decided to back off rather than chance an encounter with him. Those who didn’t stop were taking a twofold risk, of having their heads handed them by Ultima, or of being attacked by a mob of citizens inspired by the hero’s example. All of a sudden New York, that cesspool with stoplights, had declared war against criminals, and nobody was taking prisoners.
The city was becoming an inspiration to the country, and Ultima was poster child for the revolution.
Ultima never personally paid me a cent for the work I did for him, but our relationship was profitable nonetheless. New clients came knocking at my door, leaving me with hefty retainers and their reputations to mold. Licensing concerns arrived with hats in hands, seeking to buy the rights to slap Ultima’s face on everything from lunchboxes to video games, to create action figures in his likeness, to sell replicas of his costume, to share fictionalized versions of his adventures with the public via cartoons, comics, movies, and books. Ultima himself had a short attention span when it came to dealing with the business end of his life. In fact, he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with it. Seeing as how I was the one selling his reputation to the public, making them forget the methods he used to achieve what he did for them, he left these matters in my hands. I told him the exposure was good for him, that while his actions spoke for themselves, the creation of an Ultima mythos by way of licensing bits and pieces of himself made him appear friendlier and infinitely less threatening. Familiarity would breed comfort.
Except for agreeing to talk to me for the book about him, Ultima didn’t care, just as long as he was allowed to get on with his work. He trusted me to handle these things—and the money they brought flooding in—for him.
Naturally, I did that on the up and up. The last thing I wanted or needed was to have Ultima pissed at me, not because I was afraid he’d hurt me but because I didn’t want him taking his business else-where. I set up a concern, the Ultima Fund, to handle things. Of course, as chief operating officer of the fund, I drew a nice salary for my efforts, but the bulk of the money went, at Ultima’s insistence, into a charitable trust to help the homeless and disadvantaged. For both moral and tax reasons, Ultima refused to take a cent from any deal. He didn’t want to even appear to be profiting from his powers and the suffering of others. Besides, if he took the money—even though it would have allowed him to quit whatever day job he held and spend more time being a superhero—he’d have to file a tax return, which he couldn’t do without revealing his real name. The way the bucks were coming in, we could have supported him in a lifestyle of his choosing by hiding the money going to him in petty cash, but he’d have none of those financial shenanigans.
So, okay, he was too goody-goody to be believed, but it worked for him and didn’t hurt me any either. I was getting mine and getting it without compromising my heartfelt lifelong quest to maintain a minimum workload for maximum profit.
Could it have been any better?
Okay, possibly. Most everybody I knew from the days prior to my becoming rich and famous had suddenly decided that I had, in one way or another, become a moral and philosophical monster. Go figure, right?
Dayle Schuyler was the first to articulate this when I ran into her late one evening at Elaine’s. I was with a prospective client and her entourage, so when I saw Dayle sitting with her escort—some young, up-and-coming singing Broadway stud—when we came in, all I could do was wave and keep moving. It was almost an hour before I could get away from my client to drift past Dayle’s table and say hello.
Dayle was clearly not overjoyed to see me, her greeting colder than I might have expected even taking into consideration her being with a new beau.
“Smile, Dayle.” I grinned. “I’m one of the people you like, remember?”
“Mmm, yeah,” she said, patting the stud-boy’s hand. Him she gave the smile while she asked him to be a dear and make himself scarce for a few minutes. He gave me a dirty look as well as he headed off to the bathroom to check his coiffure or oil his vocal cords.
“What’s with him?” I asked, leaning over to kiss her cheek. “Don’t tell me he’s jealous.”
“Remo doesn’t know who you are, Jack,” she said.
“You’re acting like you don’t either, Dayle. I do something wrong?”
“Just about everything.”
I leaned back. I stared at her. I held up my hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Do tell.”
“Think Ultima,” she said. She hadn’t called me “Doll” once yet, which meant I was in deep shit with her.
“What? You want an interview, some insider stuff for your column, you know all you’ve gotta do is ask, Dayle. There’s no reason to cop an attitude with me.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. Along with the missing “Doll,” she’d also failed to flash her decolletage for my erotic edification, and any time Dayle didn’t show cleavage to an admirer such as myself was a bad time indeed. “Buy a clue, Jack,” she said, throwing an angry hiss into even those nonsibilant words. “How in the world can you act as the public mouthpiece for that… that monster?!”
I was stunned. I showed her my stunned face. “Hey, p. r.”s what I do, Dayle. What you told me I should be doing.“
“I never said anything about representing murderers. Actors, politicians… even talk-show hosts, but not mass murderers. There’s got to be a limit.”
“You’re kidding, right? Ultima’s one of the good guys. The only people who get hurt are the bad guys.”
“If I don’t believe in state-sanctioned capital punishment, I’m certainly not about to condone some lunatic in a costume taking it on his own shoulders without benefit of a trial and a jury verdict.”
“Oh, come on, isn’t that just a touch bleeding heart?”
“What if it is? That doesn’t change what’s happening. That doesn’t make the, what… over one hundred by now?… people he’s killed any less dead.”
“That’s up to the cops to decide, isn’t it? I mean, if Ultima’s wrong, they’d‘ve come down on him by now.”
“Get out, Jack,” she warned. “Get away from that homicidal maniac while you still can. The cops are just waiting for their opportunity. He’s just a sleazy murderer with good p. r. thanks to you. Bet once you finally come to your senses and wise up, that will make you feel just so pumped up with pride.”
I tried to laugh it off, but Dayle wasn’t joking, Remo had returned from the John, and I had a client waiting for me. I told Dayle I’d see her later and was heading away when she called after me. I stopped, looked back, and waited around long enough to hear her say, “Be careful, will you, Doll?”
==========
“Still… it’s difficult sometimes. I never asked for any of this, no matter why it came my way. I have all this power, so I’m forced to use it in the pursuit of good. Yet, what is good? Should I be using it to find ways to shelter the homeless? To feed the hungry? To save the environment? Or to do as I’ve decided to do and reclaim the cities for its people?
“I do what I must. Who would do any less in my place?
“Well, yes, certainly there are those who would take advantage for personal gain. But I won’t take any manner of remuneration for my efforts. I think it would be wrong. Wrong. Even if I have given my life over to this.
“Would I have done anything different, knowing what I know now after doing it all this time?
“The killing… perhaps I would have learned to better control my strength. I can do just about anything I can conceive except… except pull my punches enough to keep from killing anyone I strike in anger. And it’s so very hard not to be angered when I come upon someone abusing someone else. Human beings live inside such thin shells.
“They’re so damned frail …”
==========
“This,” Steve Oilman said, “is totally bogus.” He flipped the prototype of an Ultima action figure back onto my desk with a gesture of disgust.
“What’s the matter with it?” Bernie French asked, reaching for it from among the litter of similar items there. We were in my apartment, my new apartment on Fifth Avenue, in the den where I had been going through some proposed licensed material when they’d been the first to arrive for the apartment’s inaugural poker game. I’d given them the grand tour, finishing off with the grand floor-to-ceiling window view of Central Park spread out below, beyond the apartment’s wraparound terrace. They did the appropriate oohing and aahing over the view, but what caught their attention were the toys.
Steve made a face and shrugged. “I don’t know, man. All the stuff Ultima’s done for New York, for our boy here,” he said, pointing at me, “I think it kinda sucks ripping him off with shit like that.”
Bernie laughed and flew the Ultima figure past Steve’s face with a loud whooshing sound.
“It’s cool with Ultima,” I said. “He’s authorized me to cut these deals for him.”
“That’s what I mean. It’s like, he’s a hero… even if he’s okay with this, I don’t know if he gets it, you know? I mean, he’s busy being a hero, he hasn’t got time to really think this stuff through. But it, I don’t know… it cheapens him. Ultima dolls. Ultima underwear.” Steve looked at me, deadly serious. “It’s disrespectful, Jack.”
Bernie punched him on the shoulder and laughed. “It’s what?”
“You heard me,” Steve said. I think he was embarrassed to cop to this kind of hero-worship. It was one thing admitting you thought some hyperthyroid basketball player was cool, but you’d never think twice about buying a T-shirt with his face slapped on its front.
“You’re nuts, pal,” Bernie said.
“Yeah. Besides, man,” I said to Steve, holding up an Ultima beach towel, “there’s something deeper than respect at work here.”
“Paying the rent on this joint,” Bernie jumped in with and started howling with laughter.
I smiled, tapped the tip of my nose, and then pointed at Bernie. “Bingo!”
Peer pressure caught Steve square in the chest and he backed down, but he still wasn’t happy with what was happening to Ultima. He just wasn’t unhappy enough to risk further ridicule over it. It was his problem anyway. Ultima and I were okay with it, so the last thing I needed to hear was whining about a perfectly acceptable business practice.
Especially one I was cleaning up with.
==========
“…I don’t know where I expected this to lead, Jack. I thought, when I started, that it was the right thing to do. I’m still not sure that it can’t be right. But for someone else. I don’t think I can go on the way I’ve been going.
“Why?
“I’m seeing them all the time now. In the street, at work, on television. And, worst of all, in my dreams. Maybe it’s because I’m not sleeping as well as I should these days. At first, I thought it was because of all I had to do. Working during the day, prowling the city as Ultima most of the night. But that isn’t it. It’s not that I haven’t time to sleep, it’s that I can’t. I think I’m afraid to, because of what I might see.
“I can’t forget them no matter how hard I try. I know that they’re bad, that they’re harmful parasites. When it’s a matter of their lives versus the lives of their victims, there shouldn’t be a question. There isn’t… but I have to ask whether I’m the one to continue making the choice, night after night, time and again.
“Who’s ‘them’? The victims. My victims. All two hundred and six of them. I know every one of their faces, every one of their names. I can tell you where each and every one of them died and how I killed them. You’re surprised I would keep count?
“I’m surprised you don’t…”
==========
Today…
Ultima was waiting for me when I got home, standing in the cold dark of night on my terrace. I walked into my den and switched on the light, jumping in surprise when I glanced out the window and saw the figure silhouetted against the glow of the city’s lights. He would have waited out there all night rather than bust the flimsy lock on the terrace door to come inside. Hell, even if it was unlocked, he wouldn’t come inside without an invitation.
A Boy Scout. Skeptics and Ultima’s detractors thought it had to be an act, but it was the real him, through and through.
I flipped the latch and slid open the door, speaking his name.
“Hello, Jack,” he said without turning around. “I hope this isn’t inconvenient for you.”
“No, no problem,” I said. “I told you, Ultima, you’re always welcome here.”
“That’s good,” he said softly. “It’s nice to know there’s someplace I’m welcome.”
“Are you nuts?” I laughed. “You can go anywhere in this city you want.”
“Yes, but will I be welcome,” he asked, starting to turn from the terrace railing, “or will people just be too afraid of me to turn me away?”
He didn’t sound right. I suppose I’d been catching hints of this tone in his voice over the last few interview sessions for the book, but I’d chalked it up to his being tired. The man worked hard at what he did; it’s no surprise there would be times he’d be at an ebb. It had to come with the territory. But this was a whole other sound, beyond tired, well on the way to bone tired.
“Is something wrong, Ultima?”
He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets as he walked towards me, his eyes holding mine, then past me, into the apartment.
“I guess you could say that.” He was behind me now. “Don’t you think there’s anything wrong, Jack?”
I turned and saw him, standing beside my desk, eyeing more merchandise bearing his likeness or distinctive “U” logo. “Nothing I know of. The city’s safe and sound, business is booming, everything’s right with the world.”
Ultima didn’t respond, still looking at the toys, but with nothing on his face to tell me what he was thinking.
Finally, he said, “I stopped an armored car robbery out at Kennedy Airport this evening.”
That wasn’t like him, bragging on his exploits. Usually it was like pulling teeth to get him talking. “Yeah?”
“Eight men,” he said, his voice getting lower, low enough that I had to strain to hear him over the sounds of traffic filtering up from the streets thirty stories below. “Two of them ambushed the guard on duty at the armored car company’s hangar, bypassed the security system, and let the rest of the hijackers inside.
“It took them only a few minutes to fan out through the building and overpower the company’s personnel, armed and otherwise. Three guards were shot dead resisting them. Then they consolidated the contents of several armored cars into one and took off in it. One of the men they shot was able to trigger an alarm before he died. I happened to be passing the airport when I saw the police converging on the hangar, mere moments after the stolen car had fled. I remembered having seen one of the company’s cars speeding onto the highway from the airport as I was flying by overhead. On a hunch, I turned around and went after the car.
“I caught up with it on the Van Wyck. The driver was keeping to the speed limit in order to avoid suspicion, but as soon as I flew across their bow in an attempt to get them to stop, he hit the gas. I stayed right with them, trying to get them to stop. To do it the easy way. But they opened fire on me through the car’s gun ports. I had no choice. They left me no choice.
“They cut across three lanes of traffic in an attempt to get off the highway at the next exit. I thought that was for the best. It was late, but there’s usually a lot of traffic because of the airport. I certainly didn’t want to risk innocent bystanders being caught in the crossfire or hurt in a traffic accident.
“Once off the highway, I was free to deal with them. There was roadwork being done on the highway, and the construction crew had left equipment on the shoulder. I used a temporary concrete road divider to block their way. They tried to go around it, but when they saw there wasn’t enough room to make it, the driver hit the brakes, but not soon enough. The armored car hit the edge of the divider and flipped over onto its side.”
Ultima paused, taking a deep breath, almost as though he were trying to maintain his composure. “They kept shooting at me through the gun ports, and I suppose that must have angered me, because the next thing I knew, I was standing on the side of the car, ripping the side door of the rear compartment from its hinges with my bare hands. Then I was reaching inside, where six of the hijackers were huddled. I…”
He paused for another deep breath and continued. “I don’t remember exactly what happened, who I got to first, but…”
Ultima’s hands came out of his pockets and he held them up for me to see. His gloves were off, his hands covered with dried, dark splotches of blood. He just stared at those bloodied hands for the longest time, almost as though he’d never seen them before, like somebody else’s hands had somehow found their way to the ends of his arms.
“I killed them,” he whispered. “All eight of them, numbers two-twelve through two-nineteen.”
Just listening to his voice chilled me, made my mouth go dry.
“The first two went easy, and then the rest tried to surrender. They knew who I was, what I did. They knew better than to resist me, but I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. Other men live ordinary lives, don’t spend their nights riding the skies, seeking to commit murder. I could have elected to do the same, I suppose. No law demanded I don this costume and do what I do, but I believed in a higher calling. What’s the saying? With great power comes great responsibility? I believed that.”
I knew what was coming, what he was going to say, but I was afraid to speak.
“But that’s not entirely true,” he said, looking up from his bloodied hands with eyes sadder than any I’d ever seen. “Power itself isn’t enough. It takes a wiser man than I to command it, to control it as it must be if it’s to be a benefit rather than a curse. I guess I believed the ends justified the means, and for a while I suppose I had fooled myself that was enough. But with all the deaths… how can I continue with the charade?
“Especially after tonight. I was so angry with the hijackers… no, it wasn’t just them. It would have been whoever I happened to come across tonight, because any criminal would have been all criminals at that moment, one of the breed which forced me to become Ultima…
“… A killer.”
“Ultima,” I said, slowly, carefully. “I think you’re overreacting. I mean, you’ve been under a lot of pressure, you’re not getting enough sleep, you said so yourself. Maybe all you need is some rest or…”
“I don’t think you understand, Jack,” he said, smiling sadly. “It’s finished.”
I pretended I didn’t get it, but Ultima wasn’t in a pretend mood. His reality was too painful for him to ignore, and when I tried telling him otherwise, using the word “hero” in the process, he shook his head violently. “I’m not a hero,” he insisted. “I’m just a man with far too much blood on his hands to consider himself anything but a murderer.”
We argued the matter for the next hour. I insisted what he’d done for the city far outweighed the lives he’d taken, that the people who died chose the life that led to their deaths at his hands. But that no longer mattered to Ultima, not with the ghosts of all those dead haunting him.
He picked up a bright yellow Ultima Halloween costume from my desk and closed his fist around it. “You’ve never killed anyone, Jack,” he said, as though my clean hands explained everything.
“No, I haven’t,” I said, feeling my anger grow. “But I learned this much from you, Ultima… threaten my life, and I’d kill without hesitation.”
“Easier said than done,” he said and let the cheap imitation of his costume, now stained with the blood from his hand, drop to the desktop. “I flew around for a week before I showed myself that first time, the night I rescued you, afraid to jump in because I wasn’t sure I could do what was needed. Afterwards, I became afraid when I saw how easily I did it.”
“So what’re you saying, Ultima?”
“I said it. I’m finished. I’m going to tell the world that what I’ve done was wrong, just as wrong and as corrupt as the deeds of those I killed. I can’t stand the thought of anyone continuing to believe me some sort of heroic ideal. I have to impress on them that I know I was wrong. Then”—he shrugged—“Ultima will simply cease to operate and disappear forever and I’ll try to put it all behind me.”
Ultima smiled at me. “I know how disappointing this must be for you, Jack. In your own way, I know you believed in what I was doing. And I want to thank you for that.”
“A lot of people believe in you,” I said, moving around behind my desk, grabbing at the merchandise piled there to show him. “Look at all this! It’s not just toys and gimmicks… people want to own things with your name on it because you mean something to them.”
“Then they had better pick a more meaningful icon. I’m sorry, Jack, but I’ve made my decision.” He was at the door now, stepping out onto the terrace. Ultima smiled back at me, the tension out of his face for the first time since he’d gotten here. “Thank you, Jack. It’s been a pleasure knowing you, my friend.”
And then he lifted off into the night.
Son of a bitch! My meal ticket was literally flying out the window, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. He’d tell the world that he was a murderer, not worthy of their adoration.
Or their merchandising dollars.
And in that split-second, three things popped into my mind. The first was something Ultima had said during one of our interviews for the book. I’d asked if he was invulnerable and he had said that when he was expecting danger, he was “fairly close to it. Otherwise, I can stub my toe just like anybody else.”
The second was what I had said just minutes ago, that I would kill in an instant if my life was threatened.
And the third, that I had a gun in my desk drawer, one I’d picked up not long after I had been mugged. Sure, Ultima had saved my life that time, but I couldn’t count on his always being there in case of trouble. There’d been a half-dozen street corners within spitting distance of my old place in Brooklyn where handguns could be had for the right amount of cash, so I invested in the concept of better safe than sorry.
I pulled open the drawer, my hand closed around the handle of the gun, and as fast as it takes to tell, I was on the terrace, looking at Ultima’s back as he lifted off into the night. I steadied myself and took aim.
“Ultima,” I called out at the top of my lungs.
He hesitated in mid-air and, hovering not a half-dozen yards before and above me, he turned.
I fired twice.
I was counting on Ultima not expecting an attack from a friend, not being on his guard, with his powers at rest. If he could stub his toe just like anybody else, he could also die like anyone else.
He jerked, his eyes going wide with pain and surprise. I couldn’t say where I hit him, but I’d aimed for the crimson emblem on his chest, and he clutched himself there in the instant he remained suspended overhead. Then, as though the string that had been holding him aloft had been suddenly severed, he tumbled head over heels from the sky.
Ultima’s eyes held mine for that instant before he fell, but I turned my head away, not wanting to see what was in them. Pain? Betrayal? Forgiveness?
It didn’t matter. The deed was done, and I could live with it. I’d acted in self-defense, to preserve my life.
I had to call the cops, of course. Tell them about the two men who had ambushed me on my way into the apartment, robbed me of cash and jewelry at gunpoint, then shot Ultima when he was coming in for a landing on my terrace, expecting to find only me, his friend, before they escaped with my property. I had Ultima’s own words on tape to explain how their guns, catching him unawares, could kill him. Their masked faces made it impossible for me to ever identify them.
I practiced going over my story a few times while I hastily gathered and dumped my wallet and as much jewelry as I could find down the incinerator, along with the gun, which I made sure was clean of fingerprints. Just in case.
Of course, even if the police ever do find the gun, I don’t expect them to suspect me, but to believe it the work of killers getting rid of a murder weapon. I had the perfect alibi, didn’t I? Ultima, the living superhero, was making me a rich man.
But I knew the public mind better than they did.
I knew a dead martyr was worth as much, probably more than, a living superhero.