Read Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen for Free Online Page A

bathe alone, if you get my meaning— lucky stiff. Uh, I guess that’s a poor choice of words, considering.
    Anyway, the radio in the water told us what had happened even before the coroner did. Anton had been electrocuted to death.
    An accident— right? I mean, we had Spats in for a few conversations, but that’s what we had to conclude in the end. I mean, that’s what my superiors told me to conclude. Given the notoriety, they just wanted the case wrapped up. Between you and me, I’m not convinced a few of them weren’t above taking a payoff from Spats. Toronto may not be a sin city like Montréal— but Toronto-the-Good ain’t as “good” as we like to claim, neither.
    But let me ask you: how did the radio get in the bathwater? I mean, the little table was lower than the top of the tub and a couple of feet away.
    Yeah, makes you think.
    * * *
    I want you to know that I’m only telling this to get it out there that I’m an innocent girl in all this— ‘kay? I don’t know nothing about— I mean, I do not know anything about any criminal activities on the part of Mr. DeMulder and his colleagues. I’m just a nice girl who ended up with the wrong friends. My agent wants me to make that perfectly clear, eh?
    Yeah, my agent. He figures my story might make a good movie. The Lady and the Mobster or something. You can’t see me over the phone, but people tell me I’m the spitting image of Ella Raines.
    So anyways, my name is Elizabeth Schevchenko— Bessy. I moved to Hogtown from Saskatchewan about a year and a half ago, eh? I was sort of a girlfriend of Spats— I mean, Mr. DeMulder. But, really, I was more The Book’s girl. No, that makes it sound all wrong. Like I was a tramp.
    Let’s start again.
    I used to step out sometimes with a guy called The Book— he was called that on account of how smart he was. No— I never knew his real name. Funny that, eh? Anyway, The Book, he was kind of Spats’s — I mean, Mr. DeMulder’s — right hand. He did things for him— sometimes nasty things.
    All I know about the actor fellow is that he and Spats — I mean, Mr. DeMulder — had a fight over a girl named Josie, eh? I was there when it happened. Then a couple of nights later The Book dropped by my apartment and his sleeves were wet. I said to him, I said: “Why’re your sleeves wet, Bookie?” (I was the only one who ever called him Bookie).
    He laughed in that way he did— like he had seen someone laugh in a movie once and was trying it on for size. He laughed and said he had been helping a guy with his bath.
    I didn’t understand what he meant. I figured it was gangland lingo for something— uh, I mean, the way people in his profession talked, eh? But then the next day I read how that actor — that Ken Anton — how he was found dead in his bathtub. But that’s all I know— cross my heart and hope to die.
    Uh, I shouldn’t have said that. Not given what happened— later.
    * * *
    Sure, me don’t-a mind talking about it— not now. All-a the bad men, they gone away, so I’m a-happy to talk.
    I run a little grocery store near whatcha call Cabbagetown. I work-a hard for me and my family. But these thugs, they demand money. Say if I don’t pay, bad-a things happen. Maybe my store burn down. So what am I to do, huh? I pay up, that’s-a what. This goes on for months.
    But then there was-a thing happen— an odd-a thing.
    Some of the boys come around my shop one night, for the payoff. It was about eight— I remember because I was-a listening to my favorite radio show as I close up. I always listen when I close up. And these-a punks come in. I don’t-a know their names, but one of them was that creepy fellow, the one-a with the glasses who always dress like he’s-a going out on the fancy date.
    The Book? Yeah, yeah I think that’s-a what the others called him sometimes.
    So this Book, he and the others come to my shop. They want-a their money. But as I getting it for them, suddenly they hear a siren—