1989: A Journey into Mystery

Part I:

New York, 1989

   Night draped the city beneath a blanket of shadows, as steam from concrete overheated by the merciless sun conspired with hundreds of damaged streetlights to obscure vision. From high above, entire city blocks looked to be enmeshed in darkness.

   The fat man, more Moloch than Buddha, looked down on his works from his skyscraper office, and was pleased by the sight.

   Noises from nearby interrupted his contemplation of the darkness, and he turned away from the window of bullet-proof glass to walk over to his desk, that he might properly receive his bodyguards when they brought the intruder's battered body before him.

   He had not covered half the distance from the window to his desk when the double doors of the office exploded inwards from the force of a single kick. The intruder strode in, unbattered and barely hindered by the three bodyguards who clung to his left arm, right leg and middle torso.

   Gold-flecked eyes swept across the room and locked on the fat man, who stood stock still where he had been when the doors erupted. The intruder continued his measured pace towards him, speaking clearly but loudly. "WHERE --"

   Without pausing a step, he spun his left foot up to slam its booted heel into the face of the bodyguard who attempted to imobilize his other leg, knocking him out and freeing himself to move perhaps a pace more quickly. "-- IS --"

   With his free arm he seized the fat man by the neck of his robe and pulled him off his feet. Somehow, the intruder managed to hold him nearly a foot above the floor. "-- SHE?"

   Kent Masefield had come calling, and the Kingpin of Crime knew fear.

   "Where is the Jester?!"

                             *   *   *

   By dawn, almost everyone in the metropolis sometimes known as Gotham knew that some new game was afoot. The reputable papers reported disturbances in the underworld while the tabloids screamed of gang warfare. TV newsmakers interviewed people rescued from muggings by a mysterious man in a brown trenchcoat, and carefully avoided any mention of his avoidance of thanks in preference to rigorous interrogation of the perpetrators.

   As yet, no one had made the required connections, or at least they had gone unremarked. So it was that only a few key individuals within the city's administrative structure knew that the city had been afflicted with a hero.

   Among those key individuals was one whom most of the others expected to do something constructive about this unfortunate state of events: Lieutenant Harry Drescher, freshly appointed NYCPD liasion to the UNSTA. He was noted for having no political or personal attachments, as well as for lacking any illusions about the larger-than-life figures with whom his office might call him into contact. After all, it was his first day on the job -- who could
form illusions that quickly?

   So, shortly after dawn, Drescher found himself in a conference room within the secret, fortified police command center, equipped with several heavy folders and instructions to deal with the situation promptly. Fortunately his opposite number as UNSTA liasion to the NYCPD, one Joel Kent, was minded to be patient with him, having seen many ill-prepared officers occupy the post before him, and deeming Drescher to have handled it better than many.

   "Once more, so that I'm sure I understand it," Drescher began as he flipped through the thickest folder. "Kent Masefield, a reserve operative of the United Nations Special Talent Agency, is busily cutting a swathe through the city's gangland, because --"

   "Because he wants to find the lair of the woman who seems to have taken an old girlfriend of his hostage -- which is a bit surprising since we all thought she'd died last year."

   "The hostage-taker?" Drescher asked.

   "The girlfriend," Joel clarified. "We know better than to presume death without a body, when a super-villain is involved."

   "Of course." Drescher had long since ceased to calculate the hours until his retirement, as the number was sufficiently large to stress him further. Instead he looked through the folder marked `Masefield K'. "No mention of a girlfriend in any of his personal data."

   "Lots of things not in the files," Joel agreed. "You might have more luck looking for Theresa Smith under `Associates'. That was the alias she used when she started working as his partner in '86."

   Drescher frowned as he leafed through typewritten pages, crime scene photos, and scraps of newsprint. "Lots of information about things he got up to in 1986 in here, but there's practically nothing about the five years before that -- and I know that he was active in the '70s. What's the story there?" He was prepared to put it to poor record keeping on the part of prior liasions, since he also knew that virtually all of them had either been nuts or gone nuts before the end of their careers. No one other than a nut would have authorized nuclear-powered exorcists to run wild in the city.

   Joel removed his glasses and began to clean them. "Because that's when he came back, after a long time where he went to pot when his mother died in '81."

   Drescher paused to stare incredulously at Joel. "His mother died, so he `went to pot'?"

   "If you'd ever known his mother, you wouldn't sound so surprised." The big man's tone did not invite further commentary. "We have reports of him in Thailand and Afghanistan for a while, but our first definite knowledge of his wherabouts comes around February of '86, when Alistair McGovern --"

   "The Science Detective from the books," Drescher interrupted.

   Joel let it pass. "-- got him fixed up enough to help him with an
investigation Feynman dragged McGovern into. There's probably a fair amount in there about that one."

   Drescher stared at the angry letter on NASA stationery and nodded mutely.

   "Anyway, that's all old news. Right now he's busily tearing the city apart looking for the headquarters of the Jester, who apparently sent him this letter three days ago."

   He pushed the folded letter across the conference room table, and the police officer picked it up and read it.

Dearest Kenny,

Your lovely lady has been seen near the
lair of a lady less lovely -- until
lately. And you don't want her to stay
there, or her good name won't be all
that she loses to the un-lovely lady's
loveless lackies.

With Love Always,
The Jester

   Drescher picked up another, much thinner file, and began to read aloud from a document within it. "The Jester. Believed to be the daughter of --"

   "That report was disproven awhile ago," Joel interrupted. "A certain Ms. Blaise did some digging into Ms. Kyle's backgound, and determined that she hadn't had any children during the time when we think the Jester must have been born. Even though she turned over some of her files to us, we didn't integrate that data until recently. As for the alleged father ... well, we shattered the theory about his `son' a while ago, and the preponderance of evidence suggests that his acid bath was as damaging to the rest of his body as it it was to his face, if you take my meaning. We don't know where the Jester came from, at all."

   "I don't care if she's the bastard daughter of a thousand maniacs," Drescher snapped, silently filing the information for when he wrote his report. "Why does Masefield think that she's in New York? From her file, she's an international crook, so why is he focusing the search here?"

   Joel shrugged. "Because the letter was delivered to the New York regional office of UNSTA, which means -- since she *wants* a confrontation with Kent -- that this is where she is. Otherwise, there'd be a more obvious clue to her location."

   "Great. And so by all projections, we have less than twelve hours to wrap this up before half the crooks in town get the bright idea to use what he's doing to cover a few scores of their own, proving the tabloids right for once. And in order to wrap this up ... no, the summary of what we have to overcome is too depressing to go into. Tell me, do we have any advantages?"

   "Numbers," Joel offered cheerfully.

   Drescher wasn't impressed. "There's two of us, plus whatever beat cops I can call up. That's not all that much."

   The bespectacled man across the table casually checked his watch.
"Actually, I also managed to call in some back-up of my own. He should be arriving soon."

   "How'll this back-up know how to find this place? It's a secret, after all."

   Joel stared at him with an odd expression. "You're kidding, right?" There came a knock at the door. "That'll probably be him, now," he said as he got up to answer it.

   For a moment, Harry Drescher wanted to ask how the back-up had managed to get this far past the security system, but then he realized that it would probably be the same way that he'd found the place. Security measures designed to stop "normal" intruders weren't much use against his sort.

   At the door stood a clean-shaven man whom Drescher guessed to be in his mid-forties, with thinning blond hair and a jaw that made him look like a younger, less bony version of Uncle Sam. He further noted that Joel Kent, who was much brawnier and also towered over the new-comer by a good two inches, straightened and stiffened as he opened the door.

   "Hello, sir," Joel said in very polite tones.

   The older man sighed. "Joel, I've asked you to just call me Steve a few times now."

   Drescher frowned. Steve. Blond hair. Looks like an American icon. Figure of authority to Joel Kent, who had been ...

   He abruptly realized who the man must be, and fought down the impulse to stand at attention and salute. "Hello, Mr. Rog--" he began, then thought better of it.

   Steve smiled patiently. "Call me Steve, please."

   "I suppose Captain is no longer appropriate?" he asked, feeling a bit faint.

   "Not for quite a few years now," Steve replied, with an odd note of sadness in his voice.

   He took a seat across the table from Joel, who explained the situation briefly. Drescher watched as the smile on his face faded as the tale unfolded and the scope of the problem became apparent. "Are we certain that it was from the Jester?" he asked at one point.

   "Let's just say that the delivery had all the hallmarks of one of her missives. The courier *may* regain the use of his legs."

   Steve nodded. "All right. When was Kent last seen?"

   Drescher checked his notes. "Shortly before three in the morning, or around four hours ago." A terrible thought occured to him. "He does need to sleep, doesn't he?"

   "He's trained himself so that he can operate without loss of efficiency on very low levels of sleep, but he doesn't normally work on less than four hours per night without a very good excuse." Joel considered his own words. "I'd like to believe that he's not so far gone as to consider this situation in that light."

   "Joel, I'm as concerned for his well-being as I know that you are, but in a way it might be a positive if he *is* that `far gone'," Steve interjected. "So far, what he's doing is more lashing out in anger than any sort of strategy oriented towards uncovering the location of her lair. While the consequences of his anger are unfortunate, we can find him and help him. But if he calms down enough to consider some of the resources he actually has available to him, he'll be walking into whatever death-trap she's constructed that much sooner.

   "What we need to do is to figure out her location as soon as possible, so that we can beat him there and offer our support when he arrives. Where could she be holed up? What sort of patterns --"

   "Steve, she doesn't use patterns. Her recent crimes have even abandoned the `practical joke' motif that she used early on. The only remaining trend is that it's always something that will draw Kent's attention. Well, this time she's got his attention in spades. The slightest chance that Smith is alive and in danger would draw him --"

   Abruptly, Drescher snatched up the letter again and read through it, silently mouthing certain words. Then he looked up at a map of the New York City area that hung from the far wall. "He needs four hours of sleep, you said? And if he gets it, he'll start considering other options?"

   Joel was staring at him intently. "That covers it, yes."

   "Okay. Then in the worst case scenario, we've got a few minutes lead on him, and I know where she is now."


To Be Continued.

   (Can you guess the location of the Jester's lair? All the clues that you need are in there -- aside from a certain amount of knowledge of the New York City area that even a tourist might have.)

   This story, while incorporating characters held under copyright by Marvel Entertainment, Time-Warner, Peter O'Donnell, and Columbia Pictures, is copyright 2000 by Chris Davies.

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