Zing, Queen of Quick

Times Past, 1959

Fun Times Four in Chicago

by Dan Swanson

It had been a great day for Ernie Earnest. The White Sox and Cubs had BOTH won last night. The sun was out and it looked like summer was just around the corner.

And based on the achievements of his students, it looked like he was improving as a teacher, too. Two of the kids in his senior physics class had just been awarded scholarships to the University of Chicago to study Nuclear Physics. Two of the girls in his 9th grade General Science class won a prize in the West Side Science Fair last weekend. And tonight he got to tell his latest naturalization class that they had all passed the citizenship test, and their citizenship ceremony was scheduled the week after next! It didn’t get any better than this!

He was enjoying the walk from the high school to the courthouse where the evening citizenship classes were held, despite the constant pain in his hips. He had been shot while helping resolve a hostage situation in 1956, and one of the bullets was so close to his spine that the surgeons hadn’t dared to remove it. He walked with a limp and a cane, but he had learned to ignore the pain. Most of the time, anyway.

When he rounded the corner onto Stutgart Street and saw the restless crowd around Mama’s Corner Store, his day started downhill fast. The people in the crowd were fighting for a better look inside the store, and a number of cops were trying to keep them back. Ernie’s stomach dropped to the ground when he recognized Captain Spinelli of Homicide through the front window of the store.

Mama Kelly and Papa Carlo had owned this store for almost half a century. When Mama had passed away last year, Papa had decided to retire. He had put the store up for sale, hoping to sell to one of his neighbors, but he couldn’t find any suitable buyers. Finally, Papa had sold to a couple who lived in another neighborhood, some distance away.

This neighborhood was old, and threadbare… not exactly run-down, but tired, not exactly poor, but money was tight. The residents were mostly descended from immigrants from Germany, Italy and Ireland, the unusual diversity brought together by their common religion. In fact, the grandparents of many of these folks had move to this neighborhood to help build the cathedral where their descendents now worshipped. They lived together, usually peacefully, because that’s the way it had been for two generations.

But the demographics of Chicago were changing. It had begun with refugees from World War II, and increased as living conditions in the Soviet Union worsened. A lot of Eastern European refugees ended up in Chicago, and most of them were followers of a different religion than most of the residents of this neighborhood.

The new owners of Mama’s Corner store were a refugee couple from Eastern Europe. They had been shopkeepers all their lives, and they realized that the people of Chicago needed shopkeepers, just as the people in the old country had. When they saw Mama’s for sale, they jumped at the chance.

Someone in the neighborhood had resented them, for being different, for living somewhere outside the neighborhood, for ‘coming in and ripping us off, and then taking our money out with them every night’. Didn’t matter that they did most of their personal business in this same neighborhood, and kept their store and the sidewalk in front spic and span, or that they sold the same goods at the same prices that Mama and Papa had. They were ‘different’ – and that’s really all the reason a thug needs to take thuggish action.

If the couple hadn’t tried to defend themselves, and instead had let the thugs destroy their store and their new lives, they probably would have lived through it. In the old country, though, they had been powerless against their thuggish government. Here the thugs were criminals, and free men and women could resist. They had resisted – and now they were both dead.

Spinelli knew he would catch the thugs. A lot of people in the neighborhood probably had a pretty good idea who had done this. They wouldn’t talk, right now, for fear of retaliation. But over the next couple weeks, every time someone was inconvenienced by not having a local market, every time someone had to spend tight money to ride a streetcar to the next-closest market, and buy lower quality produce at higher prices, every time someone noticed the boarded-up corner store, resentment towards the thugs would go up. Sooner or later, someone would secretly snitch to the beat cop – and then, Spinelli promised himself, he would come back and make the bust. It wouldn’t take long, he could wait. But he hoped nobody else got killed in the meantime!

Ernie’s day got even worse, as very close to him, one of the cops struck a frantic bystander in the stomach with his nightstick. Probably a relative of the new owners, Ernie thought. He never found out what had triggered the cop, but it really didn’t matter. The civilian doubled over in agony, and the cop started an even more painful blow – swinging the weighted nightstick down in a vicious arc towards the back of the man’s head.

Ernie’s walking stick, an honest to goodness blackthorne shillelagh, a gift from one of his former citizenship students, flashed out and deflected the blow. The enraged cop turned his attention to Ernie. He grinned when he saw Ernie move with a limp.

“Shouldn’t have butted in, gimp… I was gonna break that bum’s head, but you’ll do just as well!” He swung the nightstick at Ernie’s head, but the shillelagh easily blocked the blow. The cop changed tactics, and stabbed the stick at Ernie’s solar plexus, and his weapon was again knocked to the side. He was reaching for his pistol when he heard a chilling sound.

“Officer Magoon ! Stand down, NOW.” Magoon very carefully moved his hand away from this pistol. Captain Spinelli was not someone you wanted mad at you. “Murph, get a doctor over here for this guy!” He pointed at the civilian. One of the other cops ran for the radio in the squad car.

Magoon complained to Spinelli “This guy here was attackin’ me, and I wuz just doin my job.”

“Not the way I saw it. And I saw the whole thing. You had no reason to attack that civilian, and all ‘this guy’ did was keep you from maybe killing an innocent bystander.. As it is, you’re on report – and fined 2 weeks’ pay.”

“Why you greasy… Do you know who I am?” Magoon swelled with indignation. He was about to continue, but Spinelli cut him off again.

“You’ve told everyone you’ve ever met, over and over again, that you’re second cousin to the mayor. We’re all sick of hearing it. It’s the only reason you ever got through the Academy, and everyone knows that, too. Now shut your yap, or I’ll bust you out of the force.”

“You’re gonna regret talkin to me like that, w..”

Once again, Spinelli cut him off, before he could say something that would get him in even worse trouble. He doubted that Magoon would thank him, though. “Tell you what, Officer Magoon … I’m actually having lunch with the mayor tomorrow. Why don’t you join us and we can discuss today’s problems with him…”

Spinelli waited. Magoon didn’t say anything. There were rumors that Spinelli was about to be promoted to Vice-Commissioner of Police, so he would be experienced enough to take over when the current commissioner retired next year. Magoon started to realize that the Captain might have more pull with his (second) cousin than he did.

“Well, Officer Magoon – should I tell the Mayor’s aide to have the chef cook for three?”

Magoon shook his head and walked away.

“Just what I needed, a crippled civilian beating up one of my team during a murder investigation!” Spinelli spoke angrily to Ernie.

“Nice to see you too, Tony!” The two men shook hands warmly, then Ernie’s good cheer at seeing his friend vanished. “So what happened here?”

“Somebody trashed the place and bumped off the couple who owned the place. Looks like the wife tried to stop someone who wanted a ‘five finger discount’, she got knocked down, the husband picked up a baseball bat, and that someone shot them both.”

‘It sounds so simple and neat, so routine, summed up like that’, Spinelli thought. But it wasn’t. Two human lives. with all their stories, secrets and potential had ended. “Sometimes I hate this job.” He wasn’t talking to Ernie, but his friend responded anyway.

“Tony – if it weren’t for you, a lot of the guys who do his kind of thing would get away. And there would be a lot more of it. Never forget that!”

Spinelli nodded, just barely. “Thanks, Cap! Say, I gotta get back to work.” Spinelli turned back towards the store. He stopped, looked over his shoulder. “See if you can leave the scene without provoking any more of my boys, will you?” And then he was back inside.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Tonight’s Naturalization class was informal, the sole purpose to review Friday’s upcoming ceremony so his students would be more comfortable. He wasn’t surprised to see that most of his students were there – they were a good bunch. He was glad; teaching was always a good anodyne for sadness, for him. So, even though the class was technically completed, he used the occasion for a little more teaching.

“What is the official Oath of Citizenship of the United States?” several students raised their hands. This was a trick question, so he asked his brightest student. “Yes, Miss Ming?” ‘Anna’ Ming was a short Chinese girl with a sunny disposition.

“No specific oath is required by law, Mr. Earnest” she replied, earnestly. “According to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1953, any oath that meets the ’5 Principles’ is legal.”

“Thank you, Miss Ming. Mr. Regan, what are those 5 principles?”

Donal Regan was a big, beefy guy with red hair, a red ‘Donegal’ beard that left most of his face clean-shaven, and a twinkle in his eye. You will have to imagine his very thick Irish accent. He squinted, then counted on his fingers:

“(1) Renunciation of prior allegiances to other countries. (2) Support and (3) Defense of the constitution. (4) Service in the armed forced when required. (5) Performance of civilian duties of national importance when required.”

“Very good, Mr. Regan. Mr. Habasinski, what else?” Jozef Habasinski wasn’t sure and he fidgeted until Ernie gave him a hint. “The last sentence of the oath you are going to deliver, Joe”. That got him going.

“…I take this obligation freely without any reservations”. That wasn’t it, exactly, but close enough.

Somewhat heartened, as always, by teaching, Ernie wrapped up the class. “Remember, there’s a party at my place after the ceremony, but you gotta bring something – you wouldn’t want to eat my cooking!” It was now his tradition to have a pot-luck dinner after each new class took the Oath of Citizenship. He encouraged his students to bring dishes that were popular in their native countries, and he was gaining a very cosmopolitan gourmet. Even if he couldn’t cook!

He decided to take a bus home rather than walking. Habasinski rode the same bus. As they were talking, another man approached and without warning, yanked Ernie’s shillelagh away from him. As he crumpled to the ground with a moan of pain, his assailant pointed a gun at Habasinski.

“Donch ya be movin’, now!” Ernie immediately recognized Magoon’s voice, though it was muffled by an improvised mask, a kitchen towel draped over the man’s head, with cutouts for eyes. As Habasinski raised his hands, the thug kicked Ernie in the back. With an enraged roar, Habasinski rushed at the bad guy, who immediately shot, and the young man dropped to the ground.

A rock thudded into Magoon’s head, and he was hit at virtually the same time behind the knees. As he started to fall backwards, something smashed into his head from the left, and then something else slammed into his chest from the right. He cracked his head on the pavement, and dropped the gun and the shillelagh, and writhed on the sidewalk, no more than semi-conscious. Fighting the pain, Ernie crawled to the gun, then struggled into a sitting position. By then, whatever had attacked gunman was gone.

A siren, quickly growing louder, attested that someone nearby had already called the police. A half dozen people were rushing from nearby buildings, and one had taken charge of Jozef Habasinski.

“I was a medic in Korea! You” he pointed at one of the approaching people at random “call for an ambulance! You and you” two men in suits, who must have been working late “I need your shirts for bandages.”

At that second, the beat cop arrived. The medic saw that Ernie’s face was white and that he was shaking violently and spoke to the cop. “He’s in shock” pointing at Ernie. “You better take that gun away from him and keep an eye on that guy on the ground.” Another bystander took off her coat and wrapped it around the violently-shivering teacher. Realizing that he wasn’t needed any more, just now, Ernie surrendered to the pain and passed out.

****

A couple of hours later, Erine was sitting upright in a powered hospital bed, making his official police report to Tony Spinelli. He was fighting the effects of the morphine and resolved never to let it be used on him again.

“Thanks for coming personally, Tony. ‘Specially ‘cuz there’s no murder involved.”

“Magoon worked for me, though. I’m sorry, Ernie.” He paused, then continued apologetically. “Habasinski confirms your story, and some night security guard saw Magoon knock you down and shoot Habasinski. So even though Magoon says you attacked him, you’re off the hook.” Ernie saw pain on his face, pain that any cop could act like that, and then Spinelli changed the subject. “How’d you recover enough to knock him down like that?”

“Wasn’t me! It was hard to shee… see, damn it! …from the ground. I thought I saw… no, it must have been the pain. A hunka hunka burning pain!” He shook his head. “Sorry. I thought I saw a kid, couldn’t have been more than 4 or 5, try to tackle him at the knees. And then he fell and I was chasin’ the gun, and then I was here. I can’t remember much more – but it wasn’t me.”

“On top of the paperwork, and all the crap I’m gonna take about Magoon, that’s just what I need most right now: a bloody mystery!” (Well, maybe he didn’t say ‘bloody’…) “Good to hear you are going to be out of here tomorrow, Cap.” Nobody but Ernie and Tony knew the derivation of that nickname.

“Thanks! You and Barb are comin’ to the post-grad dinner, right?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” They shook hands, and Tony went back to his desk to finish the paperwork.

I am the Genie of the Ring

Lightfinger Looie felt really good. He’d been reading the paper this morning, and by chance he’d glanced at the obituaries, and one of the obits had given him a great idea. Yep, looks like he was about to change his luck!

*****

Excerpted from the Chicago’s American, May 20, 1959, obituary section:

Harold “Colorado” Smith Jr. 1869 – 1959: Archaeologist, Adventurer, College Professor

Dr. Harold Smith, born in Gary, Indiana on July 1, 1869, passed away quietly at home on May 18th, after a long illness. Dr. Jones spent a good part of his formative years traveling in Europe with his parents, and learned to speak 127 languages fluently. While still a child, he received his nickname of ‘Colorado’, which he strongly preferred to his real name.

Dr. Smith received the Bachelor of Science in Archaeology degree from University of Chicago in 1894. He served in the US Army during the Spanish-American war, where he rode in the famed ‘Rough Riders’ and earned the Purple Heart in the famed ‘charge on San Juan Hill’.

Following the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, Dr. Smith returned to the University of Chicago, which was to become his home for the rest of his life. In 1904 he completed his doctorate, then spent much of the next 30 years traveling in Africa and Arabia on UC-sponsored archaeological investigations. In 1935 he mostly retired from field the field, and accepted a position on the UC teaching staff. His field experience and his student-oriented teaching style quickly made him a student favorite, and his professional fame grew as a result of his frequent publications in archaeological journls. In 1940 the University recognized his stature in his field and named him as the first holder of the prestigious Fay-Copper Cole Chair in the UC Archaeology Department, a position he retained untilhe retired last year.

Dr. Smith’s wife, Marion, passed away in 1950, and the couple was childless.

****

So this Dr. Smith had no close family, no wife or kids, huh? It tore at Looie’s heart that someone as classy as this old guy would die, lonely, without an heir. Out of the good of his heart, Looie had volunteered – silently, of course, he didn’t want no one embarrassing him with praise or fanfare or nothin’ like that. He’d just real quiet-like make sure that all the valuables Smith had left behind were passed on to his heir- it would save the executor all that trouble, you know? Nothing any other good-hearted citizen might not do – but Looie just felt like doing a good deed today!

Looie was dismayed to find that the place was empty, and that someone had stolen his inheritance! He couldn’t have known that Smith was a compulsive planner, and he had long planned to have his estate sold at auction and the proceeds used to endow a scholarship at UC. Southside Estate Liquidators had been there the day after Smith had died, and everything that could be moved out of the place was already gone.

Looie thought about going to the cops about his stolen inheritance, but he realized that without a will, the cops probably wouldn’t believe him. Once again, his desire to do a good deed had been foiled – and even worse, the very same ‘public service’ organization that was supposed to protect good citizens such as Looie, the police, were helping those who stole Looie’s property rather than the true owner of the stolen goods!

His luck hadn’t changed, or maybe it had – for the worst!

Still, he was here, and the Professor had lived here for years, and was known to be a little eccentric. So Looie looked the place over good. And found a secret hiding place that SEL had missed – a loose floorboard in the spare bedroom at the back of the house. Behind it was a small leather bag, tightly closed with a drawstring. The bag was so light,there couldn’t be much in it – but it had been carefully hidden, so there must be something valuable inside.

At that instant, Looie heard the front door open. He slipped open the window and was out the back in a flash. He didn’t think about the bag again until he got home. It had almost got him caught; he might as well see the sad remnants of his inheritance! He opened the bag and shook out a small package, like a big taw wrapped in tissue paper. He quickly unwrapped the paper.

A ring! It looked way old, and it was battered and banged up. It might have been a dragon once, with the stone in its mouth, but all the details were worn or battered away. At least the stone was nice – a cat’s eye chrysoberyl cabochon about the size of a stretched out dime. He might get a couple bucks for it from Hector the Hock, or maybe pries out the gem and sell it to Jerry the Jeweler.

Funny, though – when he’d first looked at it, the ring had appeared to be much too large for him – but now that he examined it more closely, it looked like it might be a good fit. He slipped it on his ring finger, and he was right – it fit him perfectly. He held his hand up and examined it more closely. It was in better shape than he had originally thought; all it needed was a little spiffing up and it would look pretty nice. Maybe he wouldn’t pawn it after all. He rubbed the gem against his other sleeve – and then jerked his arms apart, as a burst of light and heat flashed from the gem!

When his eyes cleared, he was facing a genie! You know, a human-like male figure, bearded with blue skin, wearing a turban and Aladdinish clothes, floating in the air, with the lower half of the body trailing off into a triangle of smoke… But, instead of being a giant with bulging muscles, this was a frail, wrinkled old man with sunken chest and pipestem arms. He looked more like a long-dead mummy than a powerful genie.

“I am the Genie of the Ring!” he roared – well, actually, wheezed and the coughed, a spasm so violent he had to bend over. The coughing fit finally finished, and he continued. “I grant you 3 wishes. If they are in my power I will fulfill them!”

Looie was very clever, and he responded almost immediately. “I want 3 more wishes for every wish I make!”

“You don’t know much about Genies, do you, new Master? I said 3 wishes, and 3 wishes I meant! Next wish?” Looie realized the Genie didn’t look nearly as ancient and decrepit as he had thought originally.

“Hey! What about my first wish!? You didn’t tell me the rules! You’re a cheater!” ” Looie yelled. The Genie ignored him, except for a frown gathering on his brow. “No fair!” Looie realized he wasn’t going to be able to complain to the boss Genie, and that he’d lost his first wish forever. He would have to be more careful about the second wish.

He looked around the room and his eye settled on the throw rug, and an idea popped into his mind, perhaps prompted by recalled legends of Aladdin and the pattern of the Oriental throw rug.

“Make that rug into a flying carpet!” he commanded, pointing at the throw. The Genie was bored by now, and casually waved his hand – and the throw floated up off the floor.

“Boy oh BOY!” Looie shouted gleefully! This is gonna be GREAT!” He grabbed a corner of the rug and tried to pull it to him – but the rug flew away from him, smashed into a window and shattered it, and floated out of the house. Once outside, it floated higher and higher. Looie rushed to the window and screamed at it, but it ignored him – and he watched it silently float out of sight.

Mini-mystery!

It was the biggest wedding in the neighborhood in years. The bride was radiant and beautiful; the groom handsome and smug. Everyone was invited, and over 300 people filled St. Nicholas’ Cathedral for the Wedding ceremony, with over 1000 attending the reception. The gift table in the reception hall was groaning under the weight of all the gifts; it was going to take a truck to haul them all away. Dinner was sumptuous, and the Swing Era ‘Big Band’, superb.

Ernie Earnest didn’t dance much; his hip injury caused him too much pain. Several of his close friends had joined him at his table during the dancing, and they were discussing the decline in the neighborhood. Ernie was just finishing the story about his encounters with (ex) Officer Magoon.

“I told Spinelli that it looked like a kid tackling Magoon, but now that my head is cleared up, well…” he was embarrassed, but he was too far into the story to stop now “I think it must have been some munchkins. Well, something like Munchkins, anyway. One hit him low, two hit him high, and then they ran off before I could really see them.” He finished, clearly waiting for his friends to laugh at him.

“Munchkins, eh? That’s wild. Listen to this!” This was Sean O’Leary, the owner and barkeep of The Sword and Flagon Pub, a neighborhood favority.

“I’d just finished throwin’ out Old Snoddy, 45 minutes after Last Call…” which was a typical night for Sean “and was starting to clean the place, when someone wearing a mask jumped out from under a table and started waving a gun at me! He took the register key and headed for the bar. And there’s old Sean O’Leary, standing around like a dummy, my own piece in a secret drawer behind the bar for all the good it does me there! I mighta took a chance and jumped him anyway, but he was nervous as hell and wavin that pistol all over the place. Hard to know when he was going to point it back at me, you know?”

The crook sidled back to the bar, keeping his gun pointed in Sean’s general direction. He had to turn to flip up the ‘gate’ in the bar, and Sean saw motion, close to the ground, in the shadows near the dartboard. Suddenly, the gunman screamed, as three darts lodged in the rear of his pants! Sean dove towards the back door as several gunshots rang out. smashing randomly into the walls and ceiling.

The screaming gunman leaped high in the air, and came down on a patch of floor that was suddenly covered with soapy water! His feet flew out from under him and he fell heavily, hitting his head on the bar on his way to the floor, landing face down. The gun went flying. Sean waited cautiously, and when he didn’t see any movement, he retrieved the gun, and called the police.

“I normally put out a plate for the leprechauns every night” he told his listeners. “I left a couple pints that night, too – and every night since!”

“You guys, too?” Jerry Karle. “Never seen no leprechauns, and I don’t believe in Munchkins. But what do you fellas think about dwarves?”

For a small fee, Southside Estate Liquidation Service would help the executor of a will convert the material assets of an estate into cash. Depending on the estate, it was usually easy to sell the major, valuable pieces, but there were almost always small items, or things not interesting to collectors, left over. Twice a year, SELS would hold an inventory reduction auction of the leftovers. This bi-annual action was always a major occasion in the neighborhoods surrounding St. Nicholas, and some really good things could always be had at bargain prices. There wasn’t a household around that didn’t have _something_ that had been bought at a SELS auction. Furniture, clothes, appliances, toys, cars, tools, art, you name it. And, since the SELS folks all lived in the neighborhood, they always sponsored a potluck breakfast before the auction.

The late summer event was going well. About 3 hours into the auction, two glass bottles crashed through the windows in the front of the room and smashed, and the auctioneer’s stage was engulfed in flame!

People throughout the large room rushed for doors and windows. Several grabbed fire extinguishers and made sure the SELS folks on the stage were clear of the flames. Within a minute, someone had pulled the alarm, and the crowd could hear fire sirens from the neighborhood fire station.

In a small office off the main room, Jerry was tending the cashbox. Another lucky bidder had just paid up and was off to claim his purchases when a man ran in from the main room, slammed the door and shot at Jerry. He missed, but Jerry fell over backwards in his chair trying to dodge. The thief scooped up the cashbox and dashed out the outside door of the office, into the alley behind the auditorium SELS had leased for the event.

Oops! There was a rope stretched across the door , 6 inches from the ground, and the gunman never saw it – he tripped and sprawled forward, and both gun and cashbox went flying. He hit, and then there came some very distinct noises, ‘Whock” ‘Whock”. Peeking out the door, Jerry saw that the gunman was lying unconscious on the ground, and near his head were two rubber mallets. He would have sworn he saw two small shapes disappear into the shadows of the alley.

“The rope and the mallets were both from one of the auction lots. Good thing they were rubber! Still, they musta been dwarves, using hammers like that!”

“Wow!” Pete exclaimed, excited. “A regular plague of wee folk!”

“I wouldn’t call it a plague, exactly” Ernie responded, thoughtfully. “A plague is bad for you, but these guys have been nothing but helpful.”

“You’re not taking this seriously?” Dave Lee asked in astonishment. “Leprechauns, Munchkins, dwarves, running around the neighborhood helping people? You must be kidding!”

“In a world where men fly, where we’ve seen talking tigers, and giant robots, why not? What about Shiva and Kali? Giant beings with blue skin and 4 arms each, now that’s hard to take seriously!” Jerry joked. “Say, the bride’s about to toss her garter!” Of course, everyone in the ballroom turned to watch.

Except one lady. She got up from her chair and casually walked across the room. When she reached the gift table, she swept all of the envelopes onto a big bag and darted towards the door.

As she passed between two tables, something wrapped around her ankle and she crashed to the floor. She must have gotten tangled in the tablecloth of one of those tables, as everything on the table slid off the edge and crashed won on her. The bride and groom were aghast and fearing a lawsuit- until the saw the envelopes that had spilled out of her purse. The thief cursed under her breath; the only word anyone could make out was ‘folleto’.

Ernie recognized an Italian name for the ‘wee folk’… yet another piece of this growing mystery!

Looie’s bad luck…

Looie was determined not to blow this chance. All his life he had been thisclose to the big time, but he was always screwed by bad luck. Like the time he’d lifted 50 large – in counterfeit bills, or the time he’d hot-wired that Duesenberg at the classic auto show – and run out of gas just as he was about to ditch the cops. His life was filled with similar cases in which nothing but bad luck kept him down, but not this time!

“Please make you third wish, new master” the Genie requested.

“Yeah, yeah, just give me a few minutes to think!” Looie responded. :”What’s your big hurry, anyway? You got a train to catch?”

For an instant, small dark clouds appeared around the Genie’s head, and miniature bolts of lightning flashed. Looie blinked – had he really seen that? The Genie looked as jovial as ever – or did he? Was he just a little larger, and a little darker, and somehow, now…looming above him instead of just floating in front of him?

“I’m trying to come up with a wish that is worthy of your power and magnificence” he said, quickly. Did the Genie’s color lighten imperceptibly? “I gotta give this some careful thought. Why don’t you go back to the ring and I’ll call you when I come up with something grand enough?”

Nope, that was wrong. The Genie grew taller, and the swirling smoke that supported him started to spin faster. The clouds became visible again, and lightning flashed from cloud to cloud.

“Looie was easily intimidated. The sight of an angry Genie drove all thoughts of caution and careful thinking from his mind. His eyes darted frantically around the room – and came to rest on the brightest, flashiest thing in the room – the cover of a comic book. Of course!

“Give me real-life super-powers just like the Rush has in his comic book!” he pointed at the comic.

The Genie, who was actually very bored with this whole routine, and he had better things to do. The comic Looie pointed to was Rush #1, and it told the origin of the Russet Rocket, and the origin itself appealed to the Genie.

“It is DONE!” He clapped his hands, then, without even saying goodbye, he was gone. And he took the ring with him.

Looie ran at the wall of his apartment at top speed, starting his body vibrating at super speed so he would pass through the wall. BLAM! It didn’t work… but at least he wasn’t running at superspeed and didn’t hurt himself.

“Damn! Screwed again!” he realized he wasn’t surprised. Well, it had been a totally wasted day, so far. If he was gonna eat tomorrow, he needed to pick up some cash tonight. Putting the Genie out of his mind, as he had so many of his prior failures, he headed for the streets.

A Hot Time in the Old Town, Tonight!

Donal Regan rarely stayed up past midnight even on a Saturday. He worked construction, 6 days a week, and he was always up early. But today his boss had told him that his application for the associate civil engineer position had been approved, the promotion to take effect as soon as he achieved his citizenship. He could sleep late tomorrow, so he’d gone out to dinner to celebrate

He stopped at the corner pub on the way home, for a pint of bitter and a corned beef sandwich. When he had first arrived in Chicago, he’d been surprised and gratified to find a good Irish pub in his southside neighborhood, though the clientele included people of all descents, not just the local Irish.

He’d even made a few bucks in a dart game with a couple of strangers. It was fun turning the tables on hustlers. Maybe they’d learned a lesson, but he doubted it – but they wouldn’t hang out here any more. Still, it was really late when he finally headed for home.

Donal was crossing a side street when he saw people in the parking lot behind the new Korean restaurant on the corner. The place closed at 11; there shouldn’t be anyone around at this time. He kept on walking, past the front door, and then across the driveway that ran alongside the other side of the building. He didn’t slow down – but from the corner of his eye, he saw someone peek around the back corner of the building, watching him. Well, any plans he had of going straight home were now out the window.

He walked by two more stores and a small house on the next corner, and turned left. He slipped into the yard, and crept through a back yard, heading back towards the restaurant. The yard ended in a tall hedge that provided privacy from the parking lot. Donal carefully pulled aside enough branches until he could see into the lot. Two figures were moving along the back of the restaurant, carrying metal gasoline cans.

Donal was graceful, especially for a man the size of a lineman in the NFL (1958, remember) but there was no way he could slip through the hedge and approach these guys without them seeing him. He considered just bursting through and scaring them away, but he wanted to catch them. Behaving as they were, in this particular neighborhood, he reasoned that there was a good likelihood that they were the same thugs who’d killed the owners of Ma and Pa’s Corner store.

A distant observer, watching Donal from one of the nearby houses, would swear that he had simply vanished… and wouldn’t have been able to hear the soft sighs of displaced air that accompanied his disappearance.

Jonny (Hots) Flambeau wasn’t superstitious and he didn’t believe in ghosts or fairies. When he saw a very short figure slip onto the back porch of the house next door, he figured it was a kid, sneaking out late. Still, his partner ‘Spike’ Van Dyke would kill him if there were any witnesses. A week ago, Hots wouldn’t have believed he or Spike could kill anyone, but things had changed since then. Word was out that the Korean couple who ran this place knew who had donhe for the old couple, and had been talking about going to the law. Well, losing this place ought to make ‘em think twice, or three times… and if they didn’t get the message, why, he and Spike would be back, and who would miss a couple a’ “them” anyway?

So he snuck up to the porch, and thought he heard someone drinking. He silently pulled out his torch, and aimed carefully, and flicked it on, and then off real fast. It couldn’t be but it was! An honest to God leprechaun, drinking pint of beer the homeowner had left out for the ‘wee folk’.

“Aiee!” the little man cried, and quick as a wink, he was over the front of the porch. ‘Ye’ll nae be gittin’ yuir big clumsy hands on me pot’o'gold!”

Once he was on the lawn, Hots could see him fairly clearly in the light from the nearest street lamp. He was running right towards the parking lot where Spikes was dousing the back wall of the restaurant with gasoline. What could he do? He didn’t dare wake up the neighborhood – but he was determined not to lose this leprechaun’s pot of gold, either. He risked a quiet shout, cupping his hands.

“Spike! Coming your way!” Suddenly the little man just seemed to disappear in the shadows. Hots kept running towards the spot where he’d vanished.

Spikes was pissed. They were going to have to give up tonight’s little lesson and get out of here as soon as possible. Suddenly, though, right in front of him, a little man appeared. He seemed startled to see Spikes, but he reacted instantly.

‘Anoother one of ye big hairy sassenachs! Well, ye won’t be a catchin’ wee Paddy on this eve!” The small figure danced nimbly between his boots, somehow managing to kick the gasoline can, which spilled all over Spikes’ legs. “I’d would nae be settin’ nary fires tonight, me boyo!” And he was gone, heading towards Hots’ voice. Spike headed after him, and stopped in dismay when the wee laddie vanished.

“Hey, lummox! Over here!” the high voice taunted him. ‘Did yuir sainted mum leave ye with half a brain?”

Hots was surprised when he heard the leprechaun behind him. “Begorrah, laddie! Ye could nae sneak up on a rock, clumpin’ around like that. Here’n I were hopin’ for a little sport this fine night!” He turned around and the leprechaun zipped between his legs, laughing maniacally. He reached down to grab the annoying sprite, and something crashed into his rear, and he fell and rolled heavily, ending up flat on his back. The leprechaun leaped onto his chest and danced a couple of jig steps, before hurrying away.

“Heads up! Comin’ through!” Hots heard the leprechaun’s shrill voice again, from off to his left, and then suddenly, the little man was rushing towards him at high speed. “Oop, oop, and awayyyyy…” the magical being shouted as he leaped over the prone thug. And right behind him came Spike.

“Look out!” Hots shouted, as loud as he could, forgetting that the two thugs didn’t want to be caught.

“Oh, sh….” Spike didn’t have time to finish, one of his feet kicked Hots in the side of the head, knocking out the prone thug, and then Spike was flying headlong… but not for long… he did a bellyflop onto the lawn, and his head bounced off the grassy soil…

“And lucky he is there’s nae a drought” came a voice from the shadows.

“Aye, though with a head that hard, he’d likely have cracked the sidewalk.” The same voice, from another direction in the dark.

“I think I hear a siren; sounds as if the coppers are on the way!” Same voice, different location.

“I think me work here is done for the night. A fine way to celebrate!” There was laughing from 4 directions, and then a rustle of grass, and then silence, except for the painful mugs of the two would-be arsonists.

And, later on that day, well after the sun came up, Captain Spinelli was pleased to find that these two were the missing murderers…

The Origin…

Looie always did his ‘business’ several miles from home, in one of the less reputable ‘entertainment districts’. He had his best luck hanging around the strip joints. He saw himself as a sort of moral crusader, accepting charitable donations from well-heeled gentlemen in exchange for protecting them from the moral turpentine and drunkenness that would invariably follow if they could afford the cover charges.

He was stunned to see that, overnight, a new establishment had been built in the mouth of the alley that he considered his own private office. How could they possibly build something like that in a single day? Even more surprising, it appeared to be a store, rather than a bar or a strip joint. Aside from looking out of place in this neighborhood, it also appeared to be a very old store. In fact, the red bricks of the store front were stained, brown and crumbling, the windows were streaked and dusty, and the paint on the sign was faded and pealing.

He realized this store looked very familiar, though, but he couldn’t quite place it. After a moment of racking his brain, he realized that he had seen it before – but that was impossible! It hadn’t been here last night. He looked at the sign again, and suddenly things started to make sense. It was the Cei-U Super Store, and he’d seen it before in the comics. He couldn’t help but feel, dare he say it, giddy. This was the place the Rush had found the costume that gave him his super powers! Maybe the Genie hadn’t shafted him after all.

“Yeah,” Looie said, quietly. “This could be my lucky day.”

Eagerly he hurried inside. This place was awesome! He was surrounded by dozens of mannequins dressed in colorful costumes. In the window, there was a big guy with long blond hair. He was dressed in a blue, form-fitting, sleeveless tunic with four silver discs sewn into the material. Yellow boots and a yellow belt along with a silvered winged helmet and flowing crimson cloak completed the costume. In the mannequin’s hand, held as majestically as any kingly scepter, was a huge, hammer. Not far away, a muscular figure sported a blue bodysuit with red shorts, red boots, a yellow belt, and a red cape. A stylized “S” dominated the mannequin’s chest. Looie couldn’t help but wonder if the belts and capes of these two characters were intentional, or just a lucky coincidence. In one corner, he saw a purple skintight outfit and hood, with striped blue and black shorts, a black leather gun belt with two big guns and a domino mask hanging from the belt, and along the back wall, outfits of purple and blue, green, red, and yellow, all of which included bows and quivers of arrows as accessories.

Looie was just dazzled, looking around. He couldn’t believe it; he was actually reliving the origin of the Rush!

The ringing of the bell attached to the door had alerted the proprietor to the presence a customer, and he floated out of the back room. Looie had expected to see a pink lightning bolt with an almost human head, arms and shoulders, but he wasn’t surprised when this living lightning bolt was blue, with the features of the Genie of the Ring. Boy, this was swell!

And then Looie was reliving, in real life, the legendary scene, familiar to every comic book reader in America, playing the part of Jonah Corbett. A freelance writer, he’d wandered into the non- descript store looking for the basis of an off-the-beaten- track human-interest story. The proprietor explained that he was from another dimension, and he had chosen Jonah to receive the gift super powers. Looie was so excited he couldn’t remember all his lines, but it didn’t seem to matter, some magical force was guiding his body right now. He might as well have been one of the mannequins.

A spell cast by Qwnk, the 6th dimensional imp who was the proprietor of the shop, had selected Jonah as one worthy of receiving great powers, and drawn him here.

Looie waited for the next part of the story to play itself out when he started noticing that a number of details of the store around him differed from the Rush’s origin. The big blonde guy had a gigantic potbelly hanging over the yellow belt. Upon close inspection, the silver discs seemed more like almost-round pieces of duct tape stuck haphazardly to the faded blue tunic. What Looie first thought was a Norse war hammer turned out to be nothing more than a croquet mallet with a deep split in the handle. He took another look at the other costumes. The stylized “S” was backwards, and the cape was closer to pink than red. The mannequin itself seemed pastier in color than he first realized. The guns with the purple costume were both squirt guns, and all the arrows had suction cup tips instead of arrowheads. And the Genie, posing as Qwnk, made no reference to heroism or his worthiness.

The Genie led him to a circular rack in the middle of the store, and spun the rack on its stand. The variety of costumes hung from the rack was incredible. As it spun down, Looie was thrilled to see the costume of the Rush spinning towards him, russet red covered in wild splashes of every color in the spectrum, a style that would be called psychedelic during the next decade.

And then it spun by, and the rack slowed further, and the Genie grabbed a costume and held it in front of Looie.

“A perfect choice! Once you don this costume, the power you have always wanted shall be yours!”

Looie’s eyes widened. The wannabe supervillain dropped to his knees. His words were barely a whisper.

“I am so doomed.”

If he had bothered looking up at the genie, Looie would have noticed a mischievous gleam in the creature’s eye.

Looie’s Decision

Looie had snatched the costume and run from the store. Now he sat at home, stared at the awful thing and felt sorry for himself.

He was on the verge of incredible powers. Once he donned the chosen costume, he would be the World’s Quickest Mortal… The costume he’d been selected to wear was the costume of the Rush’s arch nemesis, who had awesome speed powers similar to the Russet Rocket – who was, in some ways, was even more powerful.

A foe who’d frequently defeated the Russet Rocket and escaped the combined forces of every police agency in the world. Number One on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list. Leader of the most vicious band of villains Earth-R had ever known! All the power and prestige Looie had dreamed of his whole life, all his for the taking… except for that horrid costume!

He knew, from reading every issue of The Rush, that he had to be wearing the costume – with nothing covering it! – or he’d be powerless. He couldn’t have it altered by a tailor or even dye it a different color’ the costume’s magic would cause it to instantly revert back to the original design! And it wouldn’t work for anyone other than Looie – the Genie’s spell had chosen him specifically, so he couldn’t give it to someone else who could use it on his behalf.

At least, that was how it worked in the comics. Wouldn’t that Genie laugh at him if this costume worked differently than the one in the comics, and maybe he could wear some other costume over top this one and still have his powers? The Genie had done nothing but mess with him so far. Looie surely wanted to have the last laugh on that arrogant puff of smoke!

There was no one around to see him; he could at least try it on and no one would ever know. And he could do some tests in the privacy of his apartment to see if it worked the same way as in the comics – he’d put a sweatsuit over top and see what happened. And, he rationalized, even if he couldn’t cover it up, when he had the costume on, he could move fast enough that no one would be able to see him. So, just maybe, it wouldn’t be that bad after all…

He picked up the mask – two shiny disks the size of 5 dollar gold pieces, with cutouts for the eyes, and placed them over his eyes. The stuck, as he knew they would. He looked in the mirror. Not his favorite color, but not so terrible, either. So far, so good…

A New Super Villain

Looie took a deep breath and stepped into the blue and silver tights, and drew them up. He could actually feel the magic swrling in the air around his legs, caressing them and gently charging them with super speed energy. Then came the matching colored skin-tight top, and one of Looie’s major fears was assuaged – the magic in the uniform molded his body to the proper dimensions – he wouldn’t be the first super villain wearing a skin tight costume over a major paunch! He stepped into the dainty little booties – what had the artists who created this character been thinking? An orange sash – a sash? Orange? For a male super villain?

‘Gimmee a break!’ he thought in disgust. This would be the first item he tried to change his looks without losing his powers. He knew that occasionally, the comic book villain had used the sash as a weapon, sometimes like a whip and sometimes like a bolo, so maybe he could discard it without consequence.

The orange gauntlets were equally sappy, though Looie had to admit that they went with the rest of the outfit. The absolute worse parts of the costume, each worse than the other, were the full face mask, the golden orange cape and the orange beret. How was he supposed ot eat or breath? And why would a villain who moved at super speed wear either a cape or a beret? How would they stay on? Wouldn’t the cape always be getting in his way?

It was, all in all, a ludicrous outfit. Yet, after looking in the mirror for a long time, Looie had to admit he looked better in it than he had in a long time, fit and young and powerful. And nobody could see his face, so it gave him a perfect hiding place. Once he took this costume off, and his body resettled into the pot-bellied slouch he normally assumed, no one would ever suspect that Lightfinger Looie was also The Czar of Zoom, the King of Quick:

Monsieur Soudain!

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With a chuckle, he wondered if the magic of the costume would give him a French accent, or whether he would have to cultivate one? He laughed to himself, as he realized that no matter how the Genie had tried to screw him over, he had actually come out ahead…

Maybe that laugh tempted fate just a little too much, or the Genie was hanging around reading Looie’s thoughts – or maybe it had always been Looie’s destiny. Whatever it was, at that instant, Looie vanished from the Earth-S universe, magically transported through the vibrational barriers between the universes (1959, remember) to Earth-S Minus, where he soon established himself as the arch nemesis of the Russet Rocket.

Some cosmic force, way more powerful than a mere Genie, noted and disapproved of a minor disturbance in the balance between universes. Rather than endure this disapproval, the appropriate universes themselves instantly compensated, one expelling a now-surplus being, the the other quickly substituting that being to fill the ‘vacuum’ filled by Looie’s departure – and a bewildered former resident of Earth S Minus instantly found herself in Looie’s apartment in Chicago on Earth-S.

Zing – The Queen of Quick!

Young Jack Drake was finally asleep and Bonnie Marlowe Drake was relaxing, watching ‘The Outer Edges’ when her police scanner picked up a report of a silent alarm in the local bank where the Drakes did their business. Her husband Todd was out until later on ‘Red Rocket’ business, so she woke up the housekeeper to keep an eye on young Jack.

Then, Bonnie Marlowe vanished, replaced instantly by Lady Victory, who strapped her shield to her back and hopped on her bike. Instants later the V-cycle was speeding towards the bank, its powerful electric motor virtually silent. The bank was totally dark, so she switched her goggles to infrared and made a quick circuit of the building. A plume of warmer air billowed out of a second floor window that should not have been open. The police had been notified by a silent alarm in the vault itself, rather than a loud external alarm, so whoever was in there might not know he’d been detected.

A ledge under the window looked promising. She parked the bike below the window, up on the stand, and grabbed a couple gadgets from the bag under the seat. She leaped into a crouch on the back of the seat, and released the catapult. The back of the seat swung upwards with jarring force, launching her into the air. She twisted slightly to correct her trajectory, and then did a flip to make sure she landed on her feet. As she landed, she slammed her hand against the concrete wall and a muffled explosion drove the end of a piton deep into the concrete wall, giving her just the grip she needed to maintain her balance.

The window hadn’t been left open or unlocked, someone had cut away most of the pane – apparently by _melting_ the glass, just inside the alarm wires. She carefully slipped through and readied her shield, then moved stealthily down the stairs to the lobby. She had expected to follow the fading infrared signature of the thief’s footprints; instead what she saw puzzled her. A strip of the floor was warmer than the floor around it, almost as if the thief had dragged a warm cloth along behind himself.

This bank didn’t have a walk-in vault, but behind the tellers’ counter there was a big steel safe – maybe 8 feet high and almost as deep. The door stood open; someone had removed the dial to reach the inner mechanism of the lock. The door shielded her from the view of the thief, but she could hear someone moving on the other side of the door. The thief was still here, rifling through the contents of the big safe. She considered her options, then tossed a sleeping gas bomb gently over the front of the door. It fell into the safe, and whoever was there should be knocked out almost immediately, unless he happened to be wearing a gas mask – which seemed unlikely for a simple bank job.

A green blur rocketed out of the safe and before Lady Victory could react, knocked her backwards, then sped to the front door. The blur slowed and she was able to make out a small woman dressed in a revealing green outfit. The villainess rubbed her hands over the door lock and the metal flashed almost instantly through the spectrum as it was friction-heated to well above melting temperature. She pushed and the doors swung open so fast they literally shattered when they smashed into the concrete walls of the bank.

Lady Victory’s shield was already flashing through the air, but the green-clad woman just ignored it. Moving faster than anyone Lady Victory had ever seen before, she picked up the two bags of bills she had taken from the vault, and vanished out of the door before the shield could reach her. Through the shattered doors, Lady Victory could see a green streak threading through the approaching squad cars. And then it was gone.

*****

The next day, a Brinks armored truck was making a delivery at a downtown Chicago bank, when the guards heard a strange ‘whooshing’ noise, and then 2 of them were practically knocked over by a blast of air – and two of the bags of cash were gone. Before they could recover, the same noise, the same blast of wind, and 2 more bags were gone. About then, somebody got the back door of the truck closed and locked, so they only ended up losing 4 bags of money. ‘Only’ 4 bags, just a little less than $60s,000. Not bad for a few seconds work!

*****

In a nondescript building in a modest Chicago commercial district, an accountant for Boss Bradely’s neighborhood protection service was verifying this week’s insurance premiums. Besides Bradley, the accountant, and the supervisors of each of the ‘protection squads’ there were half-a dozen heavily armed guards, making sure that Johnny Legbreaker, Andy the Ape and Sammy the Shiv didn’t get an ideas.

The front door flew open with a crash, and suddenly there was a green fog in the room – and any man who was touched by that fog slumped to the floor unconscious. By the time anyone in the room realized they were under attack, everyone but the accountant was unconscious – and as he dived under the table, he saw money on the table leap magically back into the sacks which had been used to deliver it. He decided he had better be unconscious too, and promptly passed out.

*****

Maurice, Inc, Chicago’s finest fashion house, was making their annual effort to convince the world that Chicago had displaced Paris as the center of the fashion universe. In partnership with P. Horowicz, perhaps the best known of Chicago’s famous jewelry companies, Maurice was hosting Fashion Flash. Chicago’s best designers showed next year’s collections, and all the models wore Horowicz pieces selected especially to enhance each design. The advertising for the show boasted that over 2 million dollars in jewelry was involved. Naturally, security was heavy, with a dozen Chicago policemen on hand, and both Maurice and Horowicz had hired private security firms.

Only the haughtiest of the haughty were invited to be in the runway audience. Hundreds stood outside the auditorium, hoping for the merest glimpse of even one of the models. The members of the fashion press had fought tooth and nail for their seats. It was certainly the biggest fashion event in Chicago this year!

Tomas Thomas wouldn’t have believed it was possible to be bored when there was a constant parade of beautiful women only a few feet away, modeling outfits that seemed to be in competition for the ‘Most Revealing’ award for 1959, but it was true. Even when he enjoyed the musical selection that accompanied a model, he soon found that all the outfits were starting to look alike. He was only here because his current girlfriend, Joy Tejada, was one of the models, but he would much rather spend an afternoon sightseeing with her than watching her strut up and down the runway.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a real treat for you now!” Somehow, at least the announcer managed to sound excited. The music changed to the 1958 hit, ‘Tequila’, which seemed to pump some energy into the crowd. “The new star of the industry is Zing, and her Fall collection has taken the fashion world by storm.”

Around Tomas, there was some puzzled muttering. Nobody had heard of Zing, or her new line, and they were more than a little disconcerted to be so out of touch!

“Here’s a classy little number, modeled by Zing herself…” the announcer stumbled over that – who had ever heard of a designer modeling her own works? He was starting to wonder if someone was pulling a practical joke, but he couldn’t figure out what else to do, so he continued reading. The muttering around Tomas grew louder as the curtain was pushed aside.

“The perfect outfit for a lively evening of super villainy…” the announcer finally ran down. As the stunned audience watched and muttered, a smaller model, dressed in a revealing green outfit, strutted down the runway. Along with her costume, in various shades of green, she was sporting a matching set of diamond and ruby studded rings, bracelets, a single ankle bracelet, a necklace with a brilliant ruby pendant and earrings. The brilliant red of the rubies fashionably set off the green of her costume. It wasn’t clear if it was the costume or her stage presence that kept the audience silent.

When she reached the end of the runway, she stopped, stared disdainfully at the crowd, and spoke in a strong, confident voice. “You have never heard of me before, but you will hear much of me in the future. I am Zing, Czarina of Zoom, Chicago’s new Queen of Crime!”

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With that, she vanished. Some of the audience thought they saw an olive green blur flash back up the runway – followed by a male human figure who wasn’t moving quite as fast.

At the word “Crime”, Tomas was moving – and he could move very fast. Thanks to the anti-crime drug he had taken years before, he thought he was probably the 4th fastest being currently on Earth, behind only Master Man, Shiva and Kali. Zing turned and skipped casually back up the runway (her casual skipping was so fast that to the audience, she vanished into a blur), so she didn’t see Tomas leap from his seat, so fast that a normal human could barely follow his movements. But he quickly realized that he’d just dropped to 5th place – even though he could clearly see her move, he couldn’t come close to matching her speed. He tried to follow her anyway.

By the time he reached the backstage area, she had finished gathering the many pieces of jewelry from the unconscious models lying everywhere, and was headed for the door. She vanished without looking back. A squad of Chicago’s finest, 2 private security firms, and Tom Atomic, in his secret identity, had been helpless to stop her.

Tony gets a surprise!

Captain Tony Spinelli of the Chicago Police Department, Homicide Division, tried again to reassure himself that lunch with Police Commissioner Stewart and Mayor Delay, even in the Mayor’s private dining room in City Hall, was nothing to worry about. After all, they’d met several times recently to discuss his impending promotion to Vice Commissioner. On the other hand, the earlier meetings had all been scheduled well in advance. Still, everything was going smoothly in Homicide. But, Bart Magoon, who had worked in Homicide, had just been released from the force, and he was the Mayor’s second cousin. But the Mayor hated that kid, anyway. What about…

He angrily yelled at himself “Whatever it’s about, you’ll know in 15 minutes!” He was sure everything in Homicide was going smoothly, and that’s really all he could control. Better concentrate on his driving.

He parked in the private garage under City Hall, and rode the luxurious private elevator in silence. The Mayor’s top aide met him and ushered him into the Mayor’s study, where not only were his boss and the Mayor waiting for him, but also, he was greeted by Illinois Governor Tranttos! He’d never met the man before, but he was greeted like an old friend. Now he was almost flumoxed – why would the governor be interested in a Captain in Chicago PD Homicide? The Governor introduced him to the other man in the room, Colonel Cranston of the Illinois State Police.

“Let’s get business out of the way so we can enjoy lunch, eh?” Tranttos suggested. Mayor Delay nodded in agreement, and turned to Tony.

“What do you know about this new supervillain Zing, Captain?”

Tony was a little surprised, but not much. If this wasn’t about him, it must be about the current big news. “So far, she hasn’t been involved in any deaths, so Homicide hasn’t been involved in any of her crimes. I’ve been following the case anyway – I have an interest in heroes and villains with super-powers.”

“Yes, we know of your friendship with Red Rocket and Tom Atomic…” Cranston said, a little impatiently. Tony started to think he might not like this man. Tall and impeccably handsome, and the trim fit of his State Police uniform was definitely the result of some none-regulation tailoring, and there always seemed to be a little hint of condescension in his voice – except when he addressed the Governor and sounded obsequious. “Vigilantes are dangerous, if you ask me!”

“Rocket and Atomic have been officially deputized to assist the CPD; they are hardly vigilantes.” Tony replied quietly. He’d heard this argument many times before and didn’t care to get involved again – particularly in this company.

The Governor looked a little uncomfortable. “Let’s stick to the subject, shall we, gentlemen? Zing, the self-styled Queen of Quick. What information do you have on her, Captain?”

“Hmm… no one knows anything about her history prior to 2 weeks ago. One day, she appeared out of nowhere and stole hundreds of thousands in cash, plus a couple of million in jewelry. Since then she’s robbed a couple of museums, the Chicago Stock Exchange, and a couple of banks. Nobody has been able to stop her, not even our resident super heroes.”

“Her super power is super speed, and she almost never slows down enough for anyone to get a clear look at her. If it weren’t for the photos taken by the runway photographers at the Fashion Flash we probably still wouldn’t know what she looks like.”

“So far, nothing new…” Cranston sniffed.

Tony ignored him and continued “She can apparently run across water and up the sides of buildings. She doesn’t seem to be able to fly, but she can jump incredible distances, change her direction somewhat in the air, and come down safely. She is apparently immune to high temperatures, since she is not burned by air friction as she runs, and she can create ultra-high temperatures by friction heating – rubbing her hands on something so fast that it melts or bursts into flames or explodes.”

Cranston was still sneering, though the other men were looking thoughtful. All of this information had been reported by one news outlet or another, but very few people had pulled it all together in a single place as Spinelli was laying it out for them.

“She can apparently move several times the speed of sound, and is sometimes accompanied by a small sonic boom. Experts on high speed are puzzled by the relative weakness of the sound – it should be several times louder than it is – and the relative ease of her passage through the air. A human body moving that fast should cause a wind that would knock people down!”

“I haven’t heard that before” Stewart exclaimed. It was clear from his sour expression that Cranston hadn’t, either. “What else?” he asked, almost eagerly.

“Only a couple more things. She seems to be only about as strong as a normal human – she never takes heavy things, only things a normal woman of her height could carry. And she either steals things like gems, jewelry and artwork for her own use, or she doesn’t have the connections to sell them.”

“How do you know that?” Cranston demanded.

“The first few days of her rampage, she stole a lot of stuff other than money. Such as the jewelry from Horowicz, some small sculptures and paintings from the art museums, and the negotiable securities from the Chicago Stock Exchange. None of that stuff has turned up since. And since then, she’s stolen nothing but cash.

Even Cranston looked thoughtful. None of the police analysts working on the case had come up with those observations yet. Tony continued…

“We’re getting into opinion now, but my guess is, some kid somehow got super powers 2 weeks ago, maybe by magic, and she has big plans but no prior criminal experience or connections. She got her powers by surprise, and the first thing she did was start stealing all the valuable loot they always show on cop shows on radio and TV and in the comic books. But she didn’t know anyone who could fence the stuff, or how to find someone who could, so she decided to stick to cash for the time being.”

“If you were assigned to the case, Captain, how would you go about catching this Zing?” Mayor Delay asked.

“Some girl in Chicagoland has a lot more money today than she had two weeks ago, and she’s going to be spending it. Also, there are probably some neighborhood pawn shops where she tried to sell some of the jewelry, and they knew that the stuff was too hot to handle, and those guys will probably be telling stories. And she’s going to be trying to make some big time connections. So that’s three things to look for.”

“As I said, earlier, Governor.” Cranston piped up, with an annoyed tone in his voice.

Tony ignored him. “And, I’d put out a notice to every police department I could reach to check their own pawnshops and fences for some of this stuff – with her speed, she could easily do her business in Los Angeles and be back home before dinner. And, if Ibis was still around, maybe he could figure out more about who she was and how she got her powers. As it is…” he paused, and then continued reluctantly “we might want to contact the St. Louis PD and ask if Majique can help us.”

Cranston snorted “That fraud?!?! You have to be kidding!”

“I agree that her reputation and powers are no match for Ibis – but she is apparently the most powerful mage working on the side of the law today. I don’t know of anyone else who might be able to look back into time and find out what we need to know.”

Before Cranston could say anything else, the Governor spoke up. “Gentlemen, I think I’ve heard enough. Captain Spinelli is clearly the man for the job.”

The Mayor and the Police Commissioner smiled. Cranston sputtered. The Governor wasn’t finished, though,

“Tony, we would like you to take command of the newly-created Chicago Police Department Supervillain Apprehension Task Force. You will be relieved of all your duties in Homicide and promoted immediately to Major. Your immediate priorities are establishing the Task Force as a permanent organization, and capturing Zing. You can requisition whatever resources and personnel you need from any law enforcement department, across the state. Major Cranston is your liaison with the Illinois State Police, who will cooperate with you fully.” He was looking closely at Cranston, and nobody in the room missed the emphasis on full cooperation.

“Congratulations, Major Spinelli! Establishing the Task Force is urgent – but you can wait until after lunch to get started.”

The Trap

Donal was only a few days on the new job and already he was working late. Not that he minded – he was already looking for a promotion. The building business was booming in the American Southwest, and Donal was angling for a transfer. Lots of work and fast promotions for competent employees, such as he was. The commercial district near his company’s office was relatively quiet, for Chicago, at this time of night.

He just happened to be looking in the right direction when Zing sped into the district, heading for the Thirteenth National Bank of Chicago, next door to Donal’s office building. He wasn’t the only one who saw her flash past, but nobody else seemed inclined to do anything. It was pretty common knowledge these days that nobody could do anything about Zing or her thefts. People in Chicago were on the verge of panic – since there didn’t seem to be any way to protect their assets, every company that could was working on a plan to get their cash, at least, out of town. 13th National had dragged their feet about following this policy, and tonight they were going to pay for their slow response!

Zing went through the front door almost without slowing down. As usual, she’d melted the lock and then shoved with super speed. Since her first bank heist, she’d started ignoring alarms, as neither private security forces, the police or even Chicago’s own Super Heroes had been able to arrive in time to stop her. Donal quickly slipped through the broken doors after her. In the shadows inside the door, he paused for a second and closed his eyes…and disappeared!

Not actually disappeared – the beefy, 6’2″ figure of Donal vanished and was replaced by 4 virtual duplicates – except that they were each only half his height.

To Donal, the process was incredibly eerie and had initially terrified him. For an instant, he felt as if his mind had been torn apart, and the from the chaotic emptiness where his mind had been, there emerged… 5 minds? Yes, 5 -each of the 4 smaller Donals had his own, and there was one other, which Donal thought of as the ‘overmind’. The overmind (Donal overmind, or Donal0) didn’t seem to have a well-defined physical location, but was always connected to each of the others, and could move into any of the individual minds at any time. Each of the 5 Donals could think and act independently, but Donal0 coordinated and the group’s actions.

Communication between the various minds was seemingly instantaneous, or perhaps speed-of-light. Nothing Donal had encountered so far could block this communication. Privately, Donal referred to his split self as ‘the Donal pack’ and he thought if he ever became publicly known as a hero, he might name himself Quadrechaun.

The pack split up moved silently and purposefully, vanishing deeper into the darkened interior of the bank. They moved with an unconscious grace that would turn the most accomplished gymnast green with envy.

Zing had been in this building earlier today, disguised in her civilian clothes, and she knew just where to find the vault. She raced into a large room full of desks, straight to the vault door which was set in the rear wall of the room.

She didn’t notice that this room itself was very much like a very large vault, with massive sliding doors now withdrawn into recesses in the front wall. She had eyes for nothing but the vault door itself. And, for the first time since she’d blazed onto the Chicago crime scene days ago, she was stymied.

The vault door was a huge slab of steel, set flush into the rear wall. The hinges must be inside, and the lock must be electronic and built into the wall, because the door itself was featureless. Once again, Zing began rubbing the door at super-speed, friction heating it, but the monolith was so massive that her best efforts barely warmed a small section. Frustrated, she changed tactics, drumming on the steel with her clenched fists, hoping to induce high-speed vibrations that might cause it to shatter.

She heard the barest whisper of movement behind her, and she whirled to see that she had run into a trap! The massive doors through which she had entered were silently gliding shut, and some kind of gas was seeping out of the light fixtures in the ceiling! If she been a little more preoccupied with the vault door, or the tiny noise had come a tenth of a second later, she would have been trapped. But a tenth of a second real time was close to an hour to her highly accelerated subjective sense of time, and she easily slipped between the almost-stationary doors.

A door into the lobby had started to open, and she could see the man in uniform whose premature movement had alerted her. He had spoiled the trap; now that she was aware, not even the massed forces of Stonelli’s fledgling Super Villain Unit, would be able to stop her. She accelerated towards the wide-open front door.

She saw the rope stretched across her path by two Donals at the last nanosecond, and even her fantastic reflexes weren’t enough to avoid it. She tripped, and sprawled headlong, and she would probably have died when she smashed into the wall or the floor at supersonic speeds, except for the magic aura that protected her from the effects of her speed. When her concentration was broken, she lost her speed – and the aura instantly slowed her down to normal human speeds. The sudden change stunned her, though she would survive, and she slid to a stop on the floor, dazed. Another mini-Donal raced from behind a pillar and quickly cast a steel-stranded net over her, and her own struggles to rise simply tangled her more tightly. Donal number three raced to her side before she could regain her concentration and her speed.

‘I’m afraid this’ll hurt ye a wee bit more than meself!” and he whacked her on the side of the head with a small leather sack filled with sand. The mini-Donals had managed to liberate the rope, net and sap from various members of the SVU team without being noticed.

By this time, Spinelli and his new team had gathered in the lobby, surrounding the 3 small heroes and the entangled villain. The confrontation between the cops and their newfound mini-allies was pretty comical. Spinelli was the first to speak.

“I might barely believe in 1 single leprechaun, if I was drunk at the time, but three of you?”

“‘Tis best if’n ye count yuir allies a wee bit more accurate,” came a squeaky voice, and a 4th mini-Donal raced out across the room from the direction of the vault.

“But… you all look like twins,” another officer observed, somewhat bemused.

“Gosh and begorrah. The lad’s right,” one of the small characters piped up, sarcastically. “‘A wonder we nae noticed before!” The cop couldn’t help but smile at the irony; he’d used the same line (without the accent, of course) when people made similar remarks to him.

“Beside,” another joker piped up. “Ye’re a fine lot ta be talkin’, ye bloody clumsy sesenachs! Who amongst ye could tell any one o’ ye froom t’others?”

Mini-D #4, the one who had just joined the group, spoke up. “`Twas nice meeting ye all, t’ be sure, but it’s time fer us to be leaving ye!” The 4 headed for the door. Various cops tried to grab them, but seemingly without effort, the leprechauns avoided capture.

“Years a practice, doncha know?” one of them explained to the bewildered Spinelli. “Can’t let none of ye big clumsy folks get yuir paws on our pots o’ gold!” He winked. ‘Tough enoough hide’n them from th’rest oov us!”

“Hold on! I need to know who you are! And you have to fill out a report!” Spinelli raced after them.

“Ye don’t say?” one of them responded. “Looks like ye and yuir boys are gonna have to do it yuir own selves, copper!” The last leprechaun stepped around the corner into a dark alley, and by the time Spinelli reached it, the alley was empty, except for a drunk lying near the wall of one of the buildings.

“Say, fella – did you see…” and then Tony thought better of it. How could a self-respecting cop ask anyone, even a drunken bum, if he’d just seen “4 leprechauns pass this way?”

Back in the bank, Stanton was talking big. “Spinelli sure messed up this one! If it hadn’t been for those midgets, the dame woulda got away, and we’d have to go in with zilch! Sure would look good on our records, huh?” He ignored the growing muttering around him. “After my report, the governor will bounce him outta the unit on his can, and then you guys will have a real leader!”

“Major, that isn’t the way it happened, and we all know it.” This was from a SVU team member who was on detached duty from the State Police. “You got _me_ busted the last time you screwed up because there weren’t any witnesses. But there’s 20 of us tonight who saw you jump the gun.” There was a lot of nodding and muttered assent, though the rest of the cops weren’t quite up to arguing with a Major just yet.

Stanton turned to Spinelli. “You hired this lying weasel? He almost got busted out of the Force, and the whole thing is in his records! I warned you he was trouble.”

Spinelli was calm. “A man is not his record, Major. And I took your warning into consideration when reviewing Officer Lioni’s qualifications.” He attempted to change the subject before Stanton could talk himself into more trouble, and spoke to the whole group. “We didn’t do bad tonight. A little overeager…” but Stanton wasn’t going to be ignored or placified.

“I’m talking to you, &~[<*!” He screamed. He grabbed Tony’s shoulder and spun him around.. It looked like he was about to take a swing, and for just an instant, everyone’s attention was on the two officers. But the tension was quickly broken by a soft sonic boom, and the smell of burning floor wax, ignited by the melted strands of the steel net. While Stanton was picking a fight, Zing has used the distraction to her advantage, and now she was gone.

“I guess we’ll continue our discussion at the station house” Spinelli remarked sadly. He knew he’d be off the hook for Zing’s escape when his team reported Stanton’s behavior – but he had caved in and let Stanton accompany the team despite his own misgivings. Well, he would do better in the future!

Epilogue:

“So, you’re moving to Phoenix?” Ernie Earnest asked his ex-student Donal Regan as they sat down for lunch at the Sword and Flagon.

Donal was very excited over the move. “Y’know I was a principal architect back in County Cork” he had worked very hard, and his Irish accent was barely audible. “They’ve not got a position for me here, but the business is boomin’ in the Southwest. So it means a promotion and a big raise fer me.”

“That’s great. The neighborhood will miss you, though.” Ernie replied. Donal changed the subject.

“Yuir lookin’ a lot better these days, boyo! Better color in yuir face, y’ve put on some healthy weight, and y’r moving a lot easier.”

Ernie’s smile lit his face as Donal had never seen it before. “It seems like a miracle! You remember when Macgoon kicked me in the back?” Ernie had been mugged a couple of weeks before, and spent a few days in the hospital. Donal nodded. “Well, somehow, he dislodged the bullet without severing my spine – and the doctors were able to remove it. There’s scar tissue built up all around it, and I’ll always have a limp, but I’m not in pain any longer!” It was a miracle, but Ernie wasn’t totally surprised. Years ago he’d become acquainted with the powerful mystical Spirit of Liberty, and he occasionally saw indications that the Spirit was still interested in him. This could be another such sign.

“So what do you think happened to that Zing gal, anyway?” Ernie asked. “For a couple weeks, she was all you heard about, and then all of a sudden she’s gone like she never existed.

“I heard a rumor that the coppers almost caught her” Donal responded, cautiously. “Maybe that shook her up and she retired. Who knows? Say, you going to the Sox game today?”

Ernie wasn’t ready to change the subject. “Spinelli told me that his team had help – a team of leprechauns, no less! And then they vanished afterwards, like magic. Strange, huh?”

“Naiver heard of the wee folk here in America” Donal agreed. “But I doo know they work alone.”

“Spinelli said there were definitely 4 of them. Said they all looked alike – and they reminded him of someone he’d met recently, but he couldn’t quite place the resemblance. I wonder if it was someone in one of my classes?” Spinelli gave a talk to each of Ernie’s citizenship classes, he was a prime example of how the children of naturalized parents could succeed in America. “We might even know him!”

“I suppose. I’m a wee bit more interested in who’s pitchin’ t’tday” his friend responded. With a grin, Ernie let it go. He was pretty sure, though, that Phoenix would soon have a new protector.

The End