Chapter 14

I ought to have slept like a log, but instead I just dozed fitfully for the next two hours or so. The morning sun coming in through my south facing bedroom window didn’t help my attempt to get some quality shut-eye. That was another thing for the shopping list; I muttered sleepily, some new bedroom curtains! I’d tossed the old ones out, as they’d all been impregnated with some noxious and likely highly toxic chemical. Something exceptionally flammable, I guessed, likely to make an explosion or fire even more hazardous. Three runs in a washing machine hadn’t cleaned them, so out they all went, along with every other curtain, bedsheet or towel in the house!

Even with the growing light, I’d almost drifted back to sleep again when I heard the sounds of a rather loud commotion next door in Pilsner’s bedroom. Startled by the loud noises, I thought at first that some overlooked trap had gone off in there, or else, I surmised that we had an intruder!

I leapt out of bed and raced down the hall to open the door to Pilsner’s bedroom and found that my last guess had been half right. Pilsner did indeed have company, but it was undoubtedly of the friendly sort. Skulda the Norse Valkyrie had paid him a visit sometime last night and the pair of love-birds had just awoken and were starting to engage in some rather vigorous and athletic sex. From my vantage point, peering through the partially opened doorway, Skulda was riding my friend hard, and from the way that the wooden bedframe was rocking and groaning, it was going to be a close bet which happened first: the Valkyre reaching her orgasm or the bed collapsing. Either way, that bedframe was likely to be a goner, but when it happened I doubted that they’d even notice it.

From my close vantage point, I could make an excellent assessment of the naked warrior maiden’s charms, which were considerable. Under that heavy steel corset the Norse maiden was concealing a rather stupendous set of breasts that despite their massive size, didn’t significantly sag or drop. The benefits of being nearly eternally young, I supposed. Her midsection, hips and bottom were also generously proportioned, chubby or even plumply husky, but those measurements were right down the heart of Pilsner’s strike zone.

Every naked woman has her own special charms, but she wasn’t anything close to my sort of dream girl, so I didn’t begrudge my friend a bit of his improved romantic luck. As the song goes,

Bless em all, bless em all, the long and the short and the tall...

My worries relieved, I quietly shut the bedroom door on them and toddled back towards my own bed, but I didn’t quite make it. Outside on the street, I could now gently hear a girl’s voice, singing some song about flowers. Taking a peek outside from my usual bedroom across the hall, I could see the young lame flower girl I’d met earlier, now plying her morning trade near my house at the corner of W .16^th and 9^th Avenue. It was raining a bit lighter now, but she had neither a hat nor a coat, or even an umbrella. Her thin dress was soaked and her hair was a wet mess, but this didn’t dampen her mood any. She had a very good voice and I raised the window a bit further to hear her flower song better.

It didn’t perfectly rhyme, but she sang it beautifully and I started to applaud when I realized that I was still standing in front of the open windows absolutely starkers! Since she was a bit too young to appreciate the view, I backed off and threw on some clothes and my coat so I could go downstairs and tip the girl properly, namely by buying all her remaining flowers.

Pilsner was a bit busy at the moment, but later on, I was pretty sure that he’d appreciate the romantic gesture of having flowers at the breakfast table to greet his overnight guest.

I checked that I had some money in my pocket, which I did, and then I launched myself out the front door in a bit of haste. I hadn’t done my usual pause and check at the doorway for some fast calculation of the odds that trouble was waiting for me outside, and this morning those odds were none too good for my health!

“Your coins might be only two,” I laughingly told the young street girl, “but now you can add two bills to that total, as well. Here’s a pair of crisp fivers for you and I’ll take all of your leftover flowers!”

She was delighted to make that exchange and took my money in a flash and then gave me a quick but heartfelt hug. Soon my arms were full of bundles of posey-tied white and red carnations and roses. Only then, with my arms full of both flowers and a happy young girl, did I spot the danger!

There were two cars parked on the street lurking in wait for me, one at each corner of my block, each with a trio of brunos loaded to the teeth with pistols and shotguns and no shortage of expendable ammunition. They had caught me nearly flatfooted, and worse still, the little lame flower girl was now right in the way!

Now that they had us surrounded, the rogue cops were getting out of their cars with their weapons ready in-hand, and they immediately started opening up on us with their riot guns! Ah ... so it was time for another visitation from the boys in blue! Yeah, the odds were near total that it was Sergeant Egan who still sitting in that unmarked squad car at the corner. As I expected, he was back with lots of friends, but rather sooner than I had anticipated.

Time and the world around us started to slow, as the air filled with incoming lead slugs and heavy-duty buckshot all flying in the air towards us. If I flung the girl down to the ground and covered her with my body to protect her, I calculated that it was certain that first few bunches of shotgun pellets would miss us. Scatterguns are pretty deadly at close range, but less of a danger the further away you are, but the cops were closing in on us fast! That might then give me only a second or two to calculate out the odds further of finding a way to get us both safely out of the crossfire.

Oddly, as I grabbed her to heave her down to the pavement to safety, she wouldn’t budge an inch.

“Now, kind uncle, it’s time for me to help you this dull and dark wet morning. Let’s get this over with quick, before it starts raining hard again.” She calmly stated as she boldly turned around in front of me to directly face the nearest incoming shotgun pellets.

“ALLAKAZAM!“ She cried out, and then there was a flash of lightning right in front of my eyes and the poor lame street girl was gone, replaced now by the looming and powerful presence of a super-heroine I had barely heard of from a few vague descriptions in the Gazette ... the incomparable Ms Marvelous!

It was a full-grown woman, not a young barely teenaged girl, now standing in front of me, protecting me from the nearest shooters. She had raven-colored hair, cut short to just her shoulders but with an abundance of Shirley Temple curls. She wore a short red dress, cut delightfully high with a gold trim to least two-thirds of the way up her bare thighs, with a golden silk sash tied loosely around her slender maiden waist. The shiny golden Go-Go boots that nearly came to her knees were a swell touch too.

She was definitely not a young flower girl anymore! This was a vision of a lass in the full bloom of spring, with solid shoulders and a medium sized but yet clearly pronounced bust. She didn’t look a day over twenty-one, but she was certainly no chippie!

Oh! But this wren was a dish for the eyes!

The gold and red costumed lady moved at least as fast as Lightning Lass, racing with the speed of Mercury himself as she ran all around us in a blur that only my time-slowed senses could detect. Every shotgun pellet and slug fired bounced harmlessly off her shoulders and chest. The impacts didn’t even seem to sting and she just smiled at the sextet of misguided police officers who had just tried to kill me.

“I’ll take them down quickly and gently, so that the police can then question them.” She casually remarked to me as she socked down each of the six villains with a single (quite restrained) punch, until they were all knocked out cold and in a heap ready for removal in a paddy wagon.

“A fine notion, usually, Ms...” I remarked, “but unfortunately, these would-be assassins are all, in fact, policemen. As are the drivers sitting in both of those cars at each end of the street. That nearer one ... just now driving away, that’s one of their leaders, a Sergeant Egan. You don’t have to be gentle with him, in fact, I’d rather you wouldn’t give him the kid’s gloves. He’s already had his personal warning to behave and ignored it!”

In a flash, Miss Marvelous had flown off and less than three seconds later she was back, lifting the entire vehicle off the ground in her arms. She then gave it a casual flip so that it landed hard in the center of the street, upside down, wheels still spinning uselessly in the air. Then she dashed off to quickly do the same with the other would-be escaping car at the other corner. The happy Shirley Temple-ish grin never left her cheerful face. She handled being shot at a lot more tolerantly that I did!

Meanwhile, in the very short interim, I started to gather up an assortment of police badges from the plain clothed bulls and gave the pile of buzzers to the heroine, who frowned. Surprisingly, she seemed either excessively innocent or new enough to the heroine game that bagging a load of corrupt police officers was something of a surprise and shock to her.

One of our dazed captives was a sergeant, like Egan, and I helped him up to his feet so that he could perhaps give us a few answers, like who had authorized or ordered this attempted killing. Egan might be pissed and burning for revenge, but I doubted he had the stones to order me killed all on his own head. Odds were, that even as sore as the loser was, that he was the type of pug that obeyed orders.

“By the power of Kassandra, daughter of King Priam, I bid you to speak to me only truth!” The most marvelous Miss commanded her captive, grabbing and lifting him up from the pavement, his feet kicking in the air, with seemingly no effort at all.

“Jonny!” The captured mugg squealed out, “Westside Jonny himself ordered our shift lieutenant, Brad Billings, to rub him out, Chancer, and do the job quickly! He said that there would trouble later on today, with a new partner helping him, Jonny that is, running things here a bit firmer and tighter from now on, and that Chancer here was an annoying nuisance that needed to be squashed first thing this morning!”

Well, that was the gist of it. He babbled on for another few minutes but his fountain of wisdom quickly ran dry. He just knew what his boss had told him, that Jonny wanted me dead, and fast. As for Egan, once again he was in a bloody daze as he slowly crawled on the pavement towards us with his broken right wrist in a cast, and well ... he knew even less. His game was just revenge and he’d been the first to sign on for this little rubout, but he hadn’t organized the party. He could confirm that Jonny and his new partner were both seriously pissed at me and now they wanted me dead, and frankly that was more than confirmation enough.

Since depositing her captives back at the local police precinct on W .39^th Street was quite a laughable notion, she tied up the lot with her long golden sash, taken from her slender waist. It stretched out more than enough to do the job, and in flash, she’d flown off, cargo in tow, to Central Precinct and police headquarters in midtown to properly deliver her eight crooked dick captives for proper legal justice.

Alone on the sidewalk, I checked the odds of anything further happening on my short walk back to my graystone and then reexamined the chances twice more. Since nothing else seemed likely to ruin my early morning, I gathered up my flowers and the flower girl’s cane and walked back to the mansion, to find the lame young girl waiting for me, sitting on my front stoop as if nothing had happened.

“The streets have eyes and ears, my marvelous young Miss,” I laughed with a smile, “so I think you’d better come on in and bite an egg with me. I’ll put the kettle on for hot cocoa, or tea, if you would prefer?”

“Uncle, I think I’d just love a cup of chocolate, with little marshmallows, if you have any? Oh! That would be just lovely, it’s been a wet and chilly night!”

“No marshmallows, or at least I don’t think we have any,” I replied as I let her into the house, “but the cocoa should be plenty good. Some strong imported Dutch stuff, I think, according to the tin.

“Sounds swell ... now what did you do to the floor? It looks like an earthquake hit the place!” She giggled.

“Of sorts. I had a visitor the other evening, a rather unusual woman called the Miracle Maid. She took it upon herself to help me out with a few home improvements that I’m starting to think weren’t much of an actual improvement.”

I guided her back to the kitchen and sat her down at the breakfast table and started warming up milk in a saucepan.

“Oh, Miss Miracle!” She gasped, “I know of her and might have even seen her around a time or two. You pegged her right, I think ... Blackwing’s told me that she’s sweet enough, once you get to know her, but that she’s otherwise a very odd duck!”

“Alright, young lady, or not-so young lady, whichever one of you is the real you. Start spilling! I want the whole wire right now, so you don’t budge from that chair until you’ve sung like a canary!”

“You’re friends with Green Canary too?” She gasped, right as the milk began to simmer as I brought us mugs for our cocoa. “I’ve met her a few times, usually with Blackwing, and she acts all grumpy and everything, but really deep down inside I think she’s a real sweetheart too.”

“We’re sort of acquainted,” I admitted, as I make our hot drinks, “but we’re actually not all that intimate, personally speaking. Now ... how is it that you, or the other you, know them?”

“It’s something of a long story, but the gist is that about a week ago Blackwing tracked me down very early one morning and asked me, or rather both of me, to help keep an eye on you, especially in the morning, if I could. And she also mentioned that I should ignore the fact that you seem to be a kind and extraordinarily thoughtful person, for a hardened career criminal. She also told me that you were an unusually lucky sort of rascal, but that even luck needs help once in a while.”

“It does,” I confessed, “I’m not entirely at my best this morning due to a serious lack of sleep so far this week. Now, tell me about you, the younger lame you here right now and the other more marvelous you, if you please. I’m fairly certain that you come from a broken home and that you live mostly on the street.” The odds had certainly suggested this.

“I do, this me that is, sort of anyway. I do have a fairly unpleasant sort of aunt that I occasionally do go home to, where she and her husband drink up the money I’ve earned from selling flowers. In return, there’s sometimes a hot meal and a mattress and blanket on the floor that is at least fairly clean and also warm and dry. They don’t beat me much, if I have money for them, that is. How old do I look, right now, to you?”

“Damp and with bedraggled hair, and wearing a dress two sizes too big for you that’s one more washing away from being rags? Thirteen ... at the oldest.”

“Close enough. I turned fifteen back in 1939 ... and I’ve stayed fifteen every day and year since then. My aunt’s too drunk to ever once notice that I’ve stayed a girl for all of those twenty years, or else that’s part of the magic for the other me that confuses her.”

“You mean Ms Marvelous,” I stated as I refilled both of our mugs and procured a package of store-bought chocolate donuts to accompany our drinks. Chocolate donuts are Pilsner’s favorite morning junk food and he hadn’t skimped on that necessity at the grocery store. She was hungry, nearly starving even, and ate three of them in fast gulps before I’d finished my first one.

“Yep, Ms Marvelous. One day exactly twenty years ago, I was bemoaning my pitiful life as a crippled orphan when I was selected by the dying Wizard Allakazam to be his replacement, and became imbued with the ancient power of the gods; nine of them, to be precise! Aphrodite, first and foremost, to become the ultimate woman filled with love and compassion; Lelantos, the Titaness of air that I might fly; Apollo, for healing, light and song; Kassandra, the prophetess of truth; Artemis, for her hunting skill and endless stamina; the might of almighty Zeus, especially his power of lightning; Athena’s wisdom; and lastly the quickness of Mercury.”