Chapter 24:
Clark tapped his foot at a speed that was supposed to appear normal, if anybody was looking under their table anyway. Above the table, he was cool and collected, serene almost. Not nervously pulling apart at the seams. Lois didn't seem to notice either way, setting up her impromptu workstation as they waited in an excruciating silence. Clark hated it. He was out of the loop, definitely out of his element, and a little too close to the docks for his tastes. It was a rare event when he'd shown his face around here, usually using Nigel or some other trusted underling as a proxy, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. Fact was anybody could waltz into this small restaurant and recognize him, out him, and then everything he'd worked so hard to accomplish would all be out the window.
"So now will you tell me—"
"I'll do the talking, Kansas. You just sit there and look pretty."
He gaped at her. "Why bring me along if I'm not allowed to say anything?"
She shrugged as she flipped to a clean page in her notebook. "You were in my taxi."
Unbelievable. Clark sighed and tried to engross himself in the menu options, the plastic somewhat sticky. He frowned and tried not to think about it, focusing on the task at hand. He didn't exactly feel like seafood, but it seemed he had little choice in the matter. He mused over whether or not he could stomach some clam chowder or if he should just go all in on some fish and chips when the harried-looking waiter approached the table. Clark wrinkled his nose. The kid couldn’t be fifteen, and he looked… greasy. It didn’t bode well for the quality of food at the restaurant.
"Sorry about the wait there. Have you guys decided what you want to order?"
"Yes, I think I'll have—"
"Actually, Will, we'd like to speak with the owner about the chef's special," Lois cut in with a saccharine smile. She held out her menu to the waiter and waited for him to recognize her.
Will’s blue eyes lit up suddenly. "Of course! Sorry, Miss Lane. I'll grab him for you." The kid practically scrambled off on his new mission.
Clark frowned after the boy, lips turned out in a pout. "So I can't get the clam chowder, then?"
"No. Bobby wouldn't recommend it anyway. It's made with yesterday's leftovers."
Clark felt his gut churn at that description. "How charming."
"Hey now, you're not talking bad about my restaurant are you? I don't like undercover reporters much."
Lois grinned at the man who had just approached their table. "Bobby! Took you long enough."
"Yeah, yeah. I have a day job you know."
Clark stiffened significantly as the man slid in next to him on his side of the booth without so much as a how do you do. He tried to express his near-panic to Lois via his eyes at the clear invasion of his personal space, but to no avail. "Come on, Bobby, I know I'm your favorite customer. The best part of your day, right?"
He grinned. "You know it. Don't know about the stiff over here, though. They try to saddle you with a new partner again, Lo?"
Lois’ lips curled up at the twinge of discomfort on Clark's face, and a wave of irritation rose up in him. She was laughing at him— he was very clearly uncomfortable with the lack of distance between himself and the stranger, and she was enjoying every minute of it. Sadist. "Kansas, relax. He's not a new partner, Bobby. This is Clark Kent, the new owner of the Planet."
"Yeah, I know, Lois. You didn't have to tell me that." He thrust out his hand at Clark, and he found himself shaking it against his better judgement, suddenly very wary of how this stranger had figured him out. The fact that the man's knee was touching his wasn't easing that nervousness in the least. "Bobby Bigmouth's the name."
"Bigmouth?"
The man waved him off. "For my own good. Your friend seems a little curious, Lois. You sure he's above board?"
"He's with me, Bobby. You can both relax."
Clark smiled politely, but it didn't reach anywhere near his eyes. He wasn't sure if it was even reaching his mouth. "So, are you one of Lois' informant's then?"
"Sure. Only when she wants the best information. You gonna ask me what you really want to know?"
Clark was thrown by this squirrely man's erratic manner. He didn't exactly talk the way normal people did. Bouncing around, throwing people off-guard. Probably why he made such a good snitch. Trick of the trade. "You got me. How'd you know who I was?"
Bobby shrugged. "The type of customers this place usually pulls ain't in your league. Those threads are way too spiffy. And that watch you're wearing? Maybe five men in Metropolis got it. Richie-riches. I know the other guy is Lois' boy-toy, so I took an educated guess." He grinned and Clark felt minorly shell-shocked. "Or, maybe I saw your face in the papers. I do read the Daily Planet, you know."
Clark huffed a laugh at that, mostly at ease now that he knew the man didn't recognize him from any other dealings, but still put off by the guy's lack of personal space. "You are good."
"Yeah, yeah. Enough with the flattery, buy me a drink already. What are we here for, Lo?"
Lois leaned forward over the table and lowered her voice. "I have a hunch. Nothing concrete yet. But it could be something. What do you know about the man of steel?"
"Honestly? You know more than me. You're the one hanging off his arms every other day."
"Okay, fine, let me rephrase.” She pursed her lips, tossed a glance over her shoulder nervously. “I'm not talking about captain tight-pants directly. Who would have something against him? Maybe an ax to grind?"
Clark tilted his head, suddenly much more interested in where this was going, but tried to play it casual. He looked down at a suspicious stain on the table and frowned. Bobby scratched his head as he thought about it. "I don't know, Lois. Guy hasn't been here that long. Hard to imagine anybody would already have beef with the big blue boyscout. Why, is something up?"
Lois shook her head. "I don't know yet. I don't think it's anything completely nefarious. But remember a couple of days ago, there was that robbery where the guy just straight up tried to shoot him, and then instantly gave up?” Bobby nodded eagerly, lips pursed. “Well today, there was a jumper on this building, and I went up there to help, and then the guy pushed me off instead. But get this— miles down the same road, there was a second jumper, who leapt off the building at the same time as me, and the boyscout, as you call him, had to save the both of us. That's no coincidence."
Clark froze, the little patch of table he’d been wearing at with his thumbnail getting a brief reprieve. He couldn't believe that he hadn't connected the dots himself. "You think someone is setting him up."
"Either they're trying to test his powers, find his limits, or they're trying to prove he can't do it all, wear him down."
Clark leaned back into the booth, somewhat floored. It was ingenious of course. He wished he'd thought of it himself. If only he wasn't the target.
"Sheesh Lois. That's some heavy stuff. You alright hun?"
Lois rolled her eyes dramatically. "Bobby, you of all people know I've been in far worse scrapes."
Bobby held his hands up in surrender and shrugged. "Had to check. But I honestly can't think of anyone in particular that would be after him. Some criminal mastermind trying to get away with something. Maybe whoever tried to blow up that spaceship a couple weeks ago."
Lois' eyes met Clark's across the table in a flash, both wrapping their heads around that statement in different ways. "That would make sense. Whoever was responsible for that attack would certainly have a reason to hold a grudge.”
"Antoinette died though," Clark pointed out, trying to make sense of it all. He was the one responsible for the bombings, and clearly it wasn't him causing all this. But that meant Lois and Bobby had the wrong motivation for his mysterious opponent, and then nothing made sense.
"Antoinette was working for someone, though," Lois pointed out. "And she died before the second bombing, so there was clearly someone else involved."
Yeah, me, Clark reminded himself.
"Could be the Boss. Most likely," Bobby chimed in.
Clark's veins filled with ice at the monicker. He tried to play it off as confusion, but he wasn't sure if he was successful. "The Boss? Who's the boss?"
"Angela Bower," Bobby spouted off dismissively.
"Bobby," Lois chided. The two shared a look for an excruciating few seconds, before Lois turned to him and tried to explain. "There's always a lot of crime in a city like Metropolis, but we have a crazy amount of organized crime. Nobody knows who's running the thing, they just call him 'the Boss.' A few people have claimed to see him before, but nobody has a good description, and it's always changing."
"The guy's crazy good at what he does. I wouldn't put it past him to do all this. He'd want Big Blue out of the way for sure."
Clark's pulse rocketed again, mouth suddenly dry. God, this conversation was so close to home. He was very careful not to fidget nervously. "Sounds like our guy, then."
"Which basically puts us back where we started," Lois sighed, flipping her notebook closed.
"Sorry, Lo. I'll keep my eyes and ears alert. Head down to the soup kitchen and see if anybody's seen anything suspect."
"I appreciate that, Bobby."
“By the way, you still owe me a meal, Lane.”
“Yeah, yeah, Bobby. I’ll go help out at your soup kitchen soon enough. If you haven’t noticed, things have been a little busy.”
Clark stopped listening. It was good to know Bobby’s mind on the subject, and where he’d be. Clark reminded himself to avoid the docks in particular for a while before cutting into their conversation by offering another solution. "What if we're thinking about this all wrong? Why aren't we looking at what prompted this all, and work backwards? Not who is the boss, who would want to blow up the Prometheus?"
Lois cocked her head, Clark nearly able to hear the way the wheels in her mind were grinding. "Probably get more out of that angle than just blindly looking for the boss."
"Worth a shot." And it would take some heat off of him and he could bounce it over to someone else, someone like Lex. Clark loved it when things started working out naturally. It was a beautiful thing.
Lois stood up quickly, packing up her things haphazardly. "Thanks for your time, Bobby."
"No problem. Sorry I couldn't be of any more help."
They ended up walking a ways down towards a more reputable part of town before hailing a cab, Lois suspiciously quiet the entire way over. Clark tried several times to draw her out of her head to little avail, asking her questions about how she met Bobby, how often she met with him, whether she came down to this side of town a lot. Each query was dismissed with a soft, vague reply, until she finally snapped at him.
"Can you stop with the third degree already?"
Clark raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Hey, sorry. Didn't mean to pry."
"It's not," she cut herself off as she pinched the bridge of her nose, stopping short. "It's not you."
Clark found himself nodding, gut twisting at the sudden turn in Lois' mood. "I don't mean to annoy, Lois. You just... stopped talking, and that worries me a bit." He quirked his lips up in a quick grin, waiting for a smile or any kind of reaction he could read.
She sighed. "Look, I was almost killed today. Tossed off a building. And not even for anything I've done for once. Just as collateral damage."
Wow, was he a jerk. He could have punched himself for not thinking of that. He was quick to jump in, his hand hovering a fraction of an inch over her shoulder. "I'm sorry—"
"No, don't. I can handle that, mostly. But then you meeting Bobby— nobody meets Bobby— and all this talk about the Boss and the Messenger and the Prometheus— it's frustrating. It's too big."
Clark waited to be sure she was finished talking before trying again. He dug into his coat pocket and fetched out his shiny cigarette case, offering one to Lois silently. She accepted with a gracious smile, more than he's seen in the last twenty minutes. He lit the drug for her, and one of his own, giving them each a moment to pause before speaking. "Firstly, you don't have to worry about Bobby, Lois. I don't have anyone to tell. I wouldn't do that to you." She rolled her eyes, huffed a quiet "I-know-that" under her breath and he smiled at the vote of confidence, the pit in his stomach easing slightly at her approval. "And secondly, we don't have to treat this like a big story. Treat it like a bunch of little ones. Take it one step at a time."
Lois seemed to weigh her response carefully, dragging some more nicotine into her lungs as she thought. "It's not so much that it's too big a story. My life goal is always to find the next big story."
He put his hand out and nudged her arm softly, a thrill running through his veins at the brief contact. "Then what is it?"
She took one last puff and dropped the cigarette, grinding it into the cement under her heel with more harshness than he thought necessary. "We've been distracted. Chasing the wrong story. Someone new and bright and flashy showed up, saved the day, and everybody forgot about what almost happened. Why he showed up in the first place." Her eyes snapped to his, a fire burning inside her that he hadn't seen there before. It gave him chills that he never wanted to go away. "I don't like getting the wrong story."
Clark's smile was half-way mischievous, and he held out his arm for her gently. "Well then, let's go get you your story."
*****LnC*****
Lex was struggling to catch his breath when Asabi handed him the phone. He paused, trying his best to sound normal when he spoke. "Lex Luthor speaking."
"Lex! I'm glad I caught you. Are you alright? You sound out of breath."
His whole being perked up at the sound of her voice. "Lois darling! I was, uh, just finishing up a quick workout. I was starting to wonder about you, though! Were we still on for dinner tonight?"
"I'm so sorry, Lex. That's what I'm calling about."
Lex winced. "Caught up on a big story then?"
"Yeah. Am I the worst girlfriend or what?"
Lex laughed a little too loudly, putting a lot of confidence behind the sound to cover for the edges of any nervousness in his voice. His fingers danced in an impatient rhythm on his desk beside him. "Never, my darling! Those words can't be in the same sentence as your beautiful name."
"All right, all right. Somebody's feeling sappy."
"Any excuse I get," he grinned for her sake, but slid his eyes over to his company anxiously. "So, tomorrow night, then?"
"Yeah, tomorrow should work."
His smile felt waxy and fake. He knew very well what tomorrows meant for Lois Lane, and it was draining. "Well, then, until tomorrow."
"Night, Lex."
"Wait— you're all right, aren't you Lois?"
There was a pause that seemed to stretch on for longer than Lex liked. For a moment, he thought she might actually say something, but then the moment passed with her assurance that, yes, she was fine, just tired and had a lot of work to do. His fake smile returned, and he bid her goodnight as well before hanging up the phone and handing it back over to Asabi.
"You're in luck, you know," he turned to his guest, who sat on his knees in the middle of Lex's office with a rapidly bruising mark spreading across his right cheek. The man would have a glorious black eye in the morning, too. "That was Lois. She says she's fine."
The man swallowed harshly, scared to say a word. Lex grinned menacingly. "If one hair on her head had come to harm, we'd be finishing out the rest of this conversation with our fists."
"P-puh-please, Mr. Luthor. I didn't know it was her, she was there, she was in the way, a-and I just—"
"You reacted rashly," he snapped at the man, shutting him down swiftly. "Like a criminal. We had a plan. You were to jump on my mark, exactly timed with the second jumper. I don't care who was up there, or what they said to you. You weren't in any real danger with that nuisance flying around."
"Yeah, unless he wasn't fast enough."
"No, then we'd both have been saved the pain of this conversation," Lex sneered, and the man shut right back up. He struggled to bring his emotions back under control, reminding himself that Lois was fine, he'd heard her voice, that he wasn't his father. He stepped back, sinking heavily against his behemoth of a desk. "That phone call just saved your life. Now I'm only going to fire you."
The man nodded rapidly in response, not pushing his luck, and scrambled to his feet to go.
"Oh, and if I hear any of this get back to Lois, or anyone else, I will come after you. I know some people, you know."
"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir." He continued to back out of the room, stopping only as he ran into the tall, lumbering form of Nigel St. John entering the room. Nigel gave Lex a confused look and the man ran like a bat out of hell, not looking back.
Lex shrugged at his friend and associate casually. "He had an accident. Ran into my fist a couple of times."
Nigel mentally catalogued this behavior and smiled serenely. "Would you like me to bring you some ice for that fist, sir?"
He smiled. "That's why you're my favorite, Nigel."
