this is an attempt to post this..... thanks also to "KaCee" who betaread.... and ps, if anyone comes up with a better title, i'm all ears! i suk at titles.
This is a crossover story, East Coast versus West Coast. First things first She Doesn't
Know. This story is also done with basic premise that they've never really heard of
what's going on in Gotham, at least at night. About "Regular Man"....this was a mis-read
of "Resplendent Man", so I seem to have accidentally created a new character. Anyone
wanna write that one? I didn't see all of L&C, so some bits of info may either be weird
or..... "alternative", let's say. I use the usual suspects for the...er, usual suspects, and for
the darker side of the cast.....kinda based on the third movie. Sorry!
Steel Knights
by "Sileas" julied1@cloudnet.com
Lois Lane shivered involuntarily as she passed through the shadow of Gotham's
architecture. Another colossal statue, resembling Atlas bearing a globe; this one marked
the main doors to the city's biggest daily, the Gotham Globe. Perry had pounded
respect for the rag into her and Clark, largely because he knew the editor-in-chief, Anita
Harring. Lois was fairly certain the respect couldn't be for the reporting, though one of
their writers, Al Knox, had thought to be nominated for a Pulitzer. Most of the rest was
sensationalism, and they were getting strong competition from a publication one
hundred and fifty years their junior, the Gotham Gazette. Neither could hold a candle
to the DP, but that was Lois' admittedly biased opinion.
Two more blocks of threading through Gotham's thin twilight sidewalks and she
reached the doors to the Radisson. The spacious lobby, done in a light, muted green and
gold, was elegant and mature, a welcome contrast to the garish world outside. A narrow
waterway ran around part of the perimeter, dotted by single jet fountains backlit against
the glass walls. Lois allowed her eyes to adjust to the sight, as if easing the proverbial
sore eyes, then found an idle elevator and hit the button for the seventeenth floor.
It had taken some begging from Perry to get them to come to Gotham and do this
series, but if Lois knew then what she knew now, it would have taken groveling.
Gotham was a filthy city, bigger than Metropolis and richer, but riddled with crime the
likes of which Metro had never seen. Drugs were a serious problem here, and
prostitution was common. Clark had been approached five times in one block last
evening, and then and there they decided not to go out alone in Gotham at night. The
police were understaffed and their training wasn't very thorough. They tried to make
their presence known, but recruiting apparently didn't go very well for them.
She got off on her floor, neatly avoiding two young children coming back from the
hotel pool, their mother calling after them. Jamming the key into the door, she
bypassed the security card system and pushed the door open.
"Lois! How'd it go?"
"A rambling old man. He's barely this side of the sanity line," she answered with
a sigh, dropping her notepad and recorder on the bed before flopping down herself.
"Oh-h-h, what a day," she groaned softly, then smelled something good from the
kitchenette.
"Ready for dinner?" the voice asked. "It's not take-out, if you're wondering."
"Really?" She rolled over and got up, discarding her blazer and kicking off her
pumps. In the kitchen, Clark was just dividing a stir-fry dish between two plates of rice.
Lois' face softened. "Hey, that was sweet of you."
He smiled, a little self-conscious. "Well, I certainly wasn't going to let us do what
we did last night "
Lois' laugh cut him off. "Alright, so I made a mistake. I won't try to sample any
typical Gotham cuisine again!" She took the plate he handed her and wandered out into
the living area. Seeing the low table in front of the sofa covered in sheets of notes, she
sat and pulled some of the notes towards her. "What did you get today?"
"Well, I got a little run-around, but I did manage to talk to a Shirley Walker, the
sister of Jack Drake, who was instrumental in getting the dam in the bay for
hydroelectric power. That was a good source, but I got a cold shoulder from Alene
Dursban."
"Oh, is she the one with the governor?"
Clark nodded. "Right. I'm either headed to the library or I have to hunt up
another relative. The city's over two hundred years old, and the best we can hope for is
a great-grandchild. How's the modern side coming?"
Lois got up and went through to her bedroom, retrieving her notepad. "Well, let's
see," she said deliberately, coming back to the living room and paging back through the
notepad. "Michael Cavanaugh was borderline senile," and she gave Clark a knowing,
wearied look, " . . . so I started with the current execs in Star Chemical. I did eventually
get back to Mr. Cavanaugh, but all he did was reminisce about the Depression. If you
want to know about Gotham in the thirties, he's your man. I'll have to check back
through, but I think that was a one shot interview. Before that, I got the follow-up on
Diane Cassidy, and here's an interesting bit," Lois emphasized, sitting down again and
holding up a cassette. "Here in my fingers is the story of the Underground Railroad in
Gotham around the Civil War. Cassidy's great-grandfather was the local organizer."
Clark's eyes widened and he wore a delighted grin. "Hey, that's something!
That's a feature headliner."
"You might want to hold on that," Lois said delicately. "Some local politicians
sympathetic to the South found out, and old man Cassidy got them to keep quiet by
having them sleep with his daughter."
She got the same reaction from Clark that Diane Cassidy had gotten from her.
"Pick your jaw up, Clark."
He closed his mouth. "Quite the town, even back then."
"Yeah," she agreed, setting the cassette down. "As we are not the National
Enquirer, we might want to treat that a bit differently. What've we got to go?"
"Um . . .oh " Shaken out of his mood, Clark shuffled through the jumble on the
table and found a small spiral bound notebook. "Uh, okay, we've . . . we have to talk to
about six more, I figure. I've got the O'Malleys, who got railroad tracks started in here,
and there's another governor's connection I want to see to. Catherine and James
Raphallan is yours, with the Gotham Museum . . ."
"Art? Real art? In Gotham?" Lois slipped in wryly, around a bite of stir fry. As
always, Clark's cooking was terrific.
"Bay Printing supposedly has the biggest collection of full web printing presses in
the nation, and they're still growing printing's a big industry here. Bigger than in
Metropolis, apparently. Aditu Mohs is the school superintendent, and she's been in
office for over twenty years she'd be a big one. She's made a lot of changes over the
years, like open enrollment programs across the districts. And then . . ." He gave her a
meaningful smile.
"What?" She looked up innocently.
"The big one," he said enigmatically.
"What?" she repeated. Then she rolled her eyes. "Wayne Enterprises."
"Exactly," he said, enunciating the word. "Should be fun."
"Yeah, really," Lois said disinterestedly, around a swallow of wine.
"Don't feel up to taking him on?" Clark asked, sitting down on the sofa next to her
with his plate. "I've heard he's a hard "
"Excuse me?" Lois set her fork down, swallowing hurriedly. "Excuse me? Is
that condescension I hear in your voice?" Clark started laughing as she came close to
spluttering her objection. "Listen, buddy, you happen to be speaking to the reporter
who has interviewed two past Presidents of the United States, Margaret Thatcher, the
Dali Llama "
"Alright, alright!" Clark held up his hands in surrender. "You can do it!"
"I can do it, but I choose not to do it," she emphasized, still concentrating on the
stir fry. "If my math is correct, that's four for me and two for you. In the interest of fair
play, you take one of them, and I vote Wayne off my island." She picked up her wine
glass with a flourish and took a swallow.
"Wow," he said, leaning back and looking her up and down. "Fill me in. I thought
you'd be eager for this one. He's the single wealthiest individual in the nation "
"And that's part of my objection. The few times I have interviewed the ultra
wealthy, they've left me cold. I'm just not interested in this one," she said frankly,
finally turning her attention from her plate to Clark. "I know he's a rare interview, but I
find the mere idea tedious. I just have no interest in meeting him or talking to him."
She finished with a shrug.
Clark watched her for a moment, and when she merely returned her favorite look
of blank innocence, he finally smiled his surrender. "Well, I guess we're evened up, then.
Should take three, maybe four more days."
"Good," Lois answered firmly. "A week and a half is two weeks too long in
Gotham."
* * *
Much to Lois' amazement, she found Gotham did have a real museum with real
art in it. Their collection of Rodin was unmatched by any place that couldn't claim The
Thinker, and they also housed the most famous unfinished painting in the world the one
dollar bill Washington. The owners of the museum, James and Catherine Raphallan,
were brother and sister, not husband-wife, and they made an argumentative but
enjoyable day. The exhaustive tour lasted until noon, and it wasn't until after lunch
when Lois was able to take over in an interview. They were still recovering from a
severe vandalism case, some delicate paintings still having surface paint removed. The
vandals' paint had had a corrosive in it that was eating away at the surface enamel, and
some works had been permanently damaged.
"Did the authorities catch the creeps responsible for it?" Lois had asked, and
Catherine had nodded hurriedly, almost convulsively.
"Oh, yes yes, they were indeed caught," the somber woman answered. After
that the subject had abruptly been changed. Lois made a note to go back to that in a
follow-up interview, suspecting that there could be an inside story from her reaction.
The day lasted a lot longer than she thought it would. It was six-thirty in the
evening before she paused on her way out the lobby of the museum to pull out the
cellular. On the first ring she got an answer.
"Hi, this is Clark "
"It's me Lois. Hi."
"That was a long one. All on the museum?"
"Yeah, but it was good. I'll want to come back on a couple of issues, but otherwise
it's been good. Listen, I'm gonna head right back, and maybe we can try the in-house
service for dinner tonight. James Raphallan says they've got some top chefs at that
Radisson. Okay?"
"Mmmm . . .alright. I've got some last minute calls to make, and . . . that should
be it. See you in fifteen?"
"That'll do," Lois answered brightly. "Three more days to go, hopefully. 'Bye."
"Three days. 'Bye."
She cut the connection and looked around one last time at the museum entrance.
Probably more marble and slate than she'd ever seen. Approaching the main double
doors of heavy wood, she noticed some scuffs in the wood, and at least one deep
indentation not far from the top. Whoever they were, she thought as she pushed
through the doors, they sure did a thorough job. I'm glad they were caught.
The dark green Bonneville rental was one of the last on the street. As always, she
kept an eye underneath the car, and checked the backseat before she got in. Only two
blocks away from the museum, she started to see evidence of the homeless and
prostitutes. She closed her eyes and mind to it, pulling onto a main road and starting to
look for the entrance ramp to the inner city highway network.
Keeping a positive view of Gotham got harder every hour. The inner city
problems were monumental, and yet there were people here trying to raise families.
The city's style often went overboard from glitz and glamour to raunchy, everyone
trying to outdo the other and stick out in a crowd of millions. It was a caricature of real
life, and no one and nothing was the genuine article. And here she and Clark were, in the
lion's den, trying to capture the city's founders and shapers past and present and show a
positive view of the city. It seemed next to impossible.
She found her exit from the highway and pulled down into the uptown area of
Gotham. Somewhat safer, but the architecture itself was like graffiti on the city. It
could be said that the city had imagination compared to Metropolis, but a pig with
lipstick was still a pig. Gotham was ugly.
"Oh . . .crud," she grumbled, seeing the entry to the Radisson parking ramp pass
by on her right. Thinking of the ugly city had caused her to zone right by her turn.
She'd have to go around the block.
Pulling up to the red stoplight, she edged out, trying to see if it was clear to make
a right turn. Through her partly open window, she heard the loud muffler in the junker
next to her. The car gunned up closer to her, and the two occupants started whistling at
her.
"Hey, mama, got a minute for me?" one of them called. Lois favored them with a
scowl and thumbed the window closed. Seeing the traffic was clear, she turned onto the
side street. She never saw one of them pull out a cellular phone and dial, keeping his
eyes on her car.
* * *
"Crud. Dammit!" The street she was on curved around into a slow S-curve,
taking her away from the Radisson for a mile before she found a right turn that she
hoped would take her back. A cross street didn't look promising, and the road ahead
looked little more than an alley. She was sure she hadn't lost her sense of direction,
though, so she went on ahead. If this didn't work, she'd simply turn around somewhere
and retrace her path.
She hadn't gone more than fifty feet in the alley-road before she decided it wasn't
going to work. She shifted into park and sat there a moment, fuming, wondering if she
should call Clark and tell him she'd be a little late. But the last thing she wanted was to
seem an incompetent driver to him.
Right. Let's back out and get out of here. She shifted into reverse and twisted
back, looking out the rear window.
There were two men standing there.
She turned back to touch the horn, warning them she was backing up, and there
were two more in front of her. That's when she saw they were holding guns.
A fifth stepped up to her door and opened it. "Well, well, well. Miss Lane. You're
to be our guest." He reached in and shut off the ignition.
