And just as Heller and the group at lunch with her were filled with a renewed sense of dedication they had to sit through the worst presentation of the day.
The presenter was a lady who was a profiler at the Los Angeles Police Department. She had an odd speaking style, like a grown up valley girl whose speech cadence was still partly that same annoying pattern of a rising intonation at the end of every sentence.
As Heller watched and listened first solemnly then in bemusement, the profiler went on to explain how she had determined that this Red X was a frustrated writer, exercise addict with a cleft palate and rosacea who was the oldest child of three. Something about him not letting people hear his real voice and even though he was in incredible shape, not wanting to let anyone see his face. It was all a bit much.
Heller glanced toward O'Malley who was also rolling his eyes and muttered, "They can't all be genius."
The next one was a little better. It was a presentation by one of the Polish officials who'd been at Heller's table at lunch. With a map of the world on the screen behind him, he simply pointed out to the attendees Red X's next likely targets by looking at which too big to fail banks he had not yet robbed and which bank executives he had not yet robbed. It was pretty simple.
" . . So, Commerzbank in Frankfurt and UBS in Geneva are the two largest banks in Europe that Red X has not hit. In addition, their CEOs . . . "
He concluded by noting that the just weren't that many similar targets left for Red X to hit.
Xavier Li grinned with satisfaction in his apartment 3,000 miles away. "Nope. There aren't."
Fleming returned to the microphone and gestured for a short, fat, young guy with glasses in the first row to come forward. As he finally waddled up to him, Fleming introduced him, "Mr. Popkin is here as a special liaison from Silicon Valley. He works for Mr. Smuckerturd at Faceplant. As you all know, Faceplant has an . . exceptionally friendly relationship with law enforcement, exceptionally friendly, and also with national security organizations." A mix of chuckles and groans came from the attendees.
"Red X robbed Smuckerturd," muttered O'Malley and with his deep, gravelly voice it carried across the room. "He's the one who publicized Smuckerturd's, ah, micropenis issue." The room filled with snickers. "That's-that's why Mr. Smuckerturd is playing ball with us so happily. But it's too late. The, uh, light switch is out of the barn, as it were."
Popkin waddled up to the microphone and adjusted his glasses. "At the request of director Fleming and Interpol, Faceplant was tasked with gathering all available photographic evidence of this Red . . X person to see if it could be analyzed to rule out any suspected candidates or confirm the possibility of other parties being the person within the suit.
Behind him now, for a solid minute the giant screen was a whirl of, seemingly, every picture ever taken of Red X, most all of which were horribly lit, sketchy phone pictures taken at a distance as he climbed down some bank tower or poorly lit bank security images. A few might have been examples of cosplay. They all riffled across the screen along with every video clip as the sound system played the few audio clips, each one in a different distorted voice, computer or extra deep, of Red X's that had ever been recorded.
"We reviewed every post of every Faceplant user and every Faceplant page and continued on from there to review every available document on the entire internet to-"
"Wait, what?!" the attendees were incredulous.
"-from, from the entire internet to try to find good photographic evidence of this-this extraordinary Red X criminal."
The whirl of pictures stopped at a clip of Red X on the roof of a bank building.
"Finally, we found this."
Nearby lights lit the scene almost to an imitation of daylight. A surveillance camera behind him and to one side captured 10 seconds of Red X as a stiff wind behind him blew his cape over his shoulder revealing his superlative slender physique under the ultra form fitting uniform. Red X half turned toward the camera then casually threw something at it with a backhand flick of his wrist, a glue X, which landed right on top of the lens at which point the image went black.
"That might not seem like much but it's the best footage that exists of this guy. We've been extremely disappointed at the reluctance of some of the parties robbed by him to pass along their private security camera footage. And he's been a wizard at disabling bank cameras in advance of his jobs. But this brief, well lit footage is terrific and this is the reason why," said Popkin as the image zoomed in on a discarded plastic diet coke bottle that rooftop air currents had rolled right next to Red X's right foot. "That 8.75 inch long bottle gives us clear scale and dimensions to Red X's body. And with that, I'll turn this over to Inspector Devereaux from Toronto, the world's leading expert in the use of biometric analysis for fighting crime."
Popkin waddled awkwardly away and a slender woman in her mid thirties advanced to the microphone, she had the air of a college professor about her and wore the same obligatory pantsuit uniform as all the other women. She was clearly not comfortable with public speaking and delivered much of her information as though trying to impart it to a floor tile a foot in front of her.
"As Mr. Popkin noted, that diet coke bottle was extremely valuable to us. Here is what that bottle told us."
The screen filled with visual effects rotating the standing image of Red X and putting it next to the soda bottle. There was a cascade of little beeping sounds as dozens of dimensions appeared on the giant screen all around the image of Red X.
"Red X," continued Miss Devereaux, "is 1.85 meters tall or six foot one. He has an extraordinary lean, toned physique with a 36 inch inseam, a waist of approximately 27 inches and a chest measurement of approximately 41 inches. He's obviously an extremely athletic slender man. You can clearly see eight ab squares. He has very well developed deltoid or shoulder muscles and latissimus dorsi muscles."
"But more than that, he doesn't just have an athletic shape, he has unusual dimensions, in multiple ways. A thirty six inch inseam and a 27 inch waist is very unusual. Those calves are very, very impressive but he has also has relatively narrow ankles and, yet, large feet. His upper arms and his forearms are not very large at all. He has narrow wrists and yet large hands. In addition to that unusual 36 inch inseam, Red X's lower leg is 13% longer than his upper leg while the average man's is only 3% longer. And," she visibly blushed, "the ladies in the audience will back me up on this. Those . . buttocks are nothing short of spectacular while he also has an, uh, extremely masculine look at the front of that suit."
Discreet chuckles came from the women in the room. Also, the two asian male agents in tan suits in front of Heller were positively giddy. Out of the corner of her eye, Heller saw O'Malley shaking his head.
"We immediately started to compare Red X's physique to any and every available possible suspect, no matter how seemingly unlikely. We were quickly able to rule out hundreds of the most accomplished thieves around the world, men who had been considered genuine suspects such as Matteo Furlani out of Rome," said Devereaux as the screen showed a slightly stocky red haired man smirking at the camera from a seat at a sidewalk cafe, "and Jacques Bruix of Paris." The screen showed a short, dark haired man on the Champs Elysee sidewalk with a girlfriend.
"Fat, or even just a little bit overweight, too stocky, too short, too tall or simply having a very average physique. Any deviation from the particular collection of physical attributes we see in this extraordinary Red X and we ruled out a suspect, all thanks to that coke bottle. That was helpful. But the other side of it is that his physique is so unusual, that we only got thirty one hits of confirmed 98% or better matches on all the planet. One . . . "
The screen showed Kid Flash in his yellow topped, red bottom skin tight unitard, flame orange hair spilling out the top, almost facing the camera on the streets of Jump City while talking to his pink haired wife, Jinx. The image froze and a series of beeps and clicks were heard as dimensions popped up all around him attesting to his six foot one height, 36 inch inseam and 27 inch waist as well as a dozen other dimensions. The attendees chuckled.
Uh, no. Don't think so.
"The hero known as Kid Flash was one possible match. But he is a hero and no one has ever seen Red X use super speed. Nevertheless, we made discreet contact with Robin of the Teen Titans who was able to confirm to our satisfaction that Kid Flash's proven whereabouts in public conflict with the time and location of jobs pulled off by Red X on not just a few occasions but perhaps most all of them. What's more, he claims that Kid Flash has fought Red X alongside the rest of the Teen Titans."
"So, we looked at the other matches."
One after another, the images of thirty more candidates filled the giant screen behind her, first caught in action or just standing in front of a camera before each image froze only to be festooned with dimensions showing that guy to be a close match to Red X. Devereaux read off each candidate's name but, in each case, quickly informed the attendees that this guy could not have committed many or any of the crimes due to his confirmed presence elsewhere.
The matches were heavy on track and field athletes There were four triple jumpers, one each from Jamaica, Finland, Estonia and Ghana. There were five hurdlers, from Finland, the U.S., UK, Brazil and South Africa, two long jumpers each from Brazil and the U.S. a pole vaulter from Russia, a skier from Switzerland and 400 meter runners from Tunisia, Germany and Burkino Faso. There were decathletes, too. But there was also the Spanish star of the newest Cirque Du Soleil production. There was a Russian fencing champion and an Argentinian tennis player. There were soccer players from Italy and Brazil, a guy whose primary job was apparently to be a body double for Hollywood actors in nude scenes and a fitness model who also trained Hollywood stars.
One after another they were shown to have the right body but not motive or opportunity. Finally, the 20 foot screen behind her first went dark and then filled with the image of Xavier Li, in white tights and a white top with a red and green argyle pattern dancing the Harlequinade variation for the Hong Kong Ballet. The attendees seemed to snicker in unison. "Lastly," sighed Devereaux, "this is 21 year old Xavier Li back when he was 19." The clip continued playing showing Xavier Li making a literally limp wristed gesture and then prancing a circle around the stage to growing sounds of derisive laughter throughout the room.
O'Malley shook his head muttering, "We'd have to believe this guy robbed all these places in between marching in gay pride parades."
At that same moment, 3,000 miles away in Jump City, watching the presentation on his 60 inch tv screen, Xavier Li groaned.
"No! Oh come on!"
He panted slightly, finishing a set of overhead presses with 50 pounds in each hand finally dropping the dumbells to the carpet and advancing toward his giant tv screen.
"No! Come on! Not that stupid Harlequinade variation! Ugh!"
He groaned as he continued to watch, the Interpol audience all guffawing at the sight of him looking like a complete sissy boy alternately prancing around the stage and making literally limp wristed hand gestures.
Ugh. The worst role he'd ever danced. Freaking humiliating. "They've got like 50 videos of me on youtube and they pick that?!"
X did his arm stretches while continuing to watch, curious what they would say about him and to his mortification, the video got stuck. Three times over it showed the same horrible clip, the least masculine 30 seconds of his life over and over and over while the audience laughter that he could hear from the podium mic only seemed to get louder.
Finally the giant image froze with him in the middle of a ridiculous smile and a limp wristed gesture.
"Oh, come on!" He groaned in complaint yet again then bitterly shook his head.
The Harlequinade. The freaking Harlequinade! That stupid role! There were things a guy sometimes had to do on stage as a ballet dancer that, okay, that just weren't very . . . masculine, that were kind of silly but no other roles had been all that troublesome for X.
The fricking Harlequinade! The hairstylists had created curls in his hair fringing his face. The makeup people had put rouge on his cheeks, mild lipstick on his lips and eyeliner and eye shadow. He wore white tights and a white top with a red and yellow argyle pattern on the front and frilly lace at the cuffs, waist and collar. This was all bad enough but it paled in comparison to the way the role required you to dance. X had had to literally prance around the stage, literally prance, like some gay court jester, alternately mouthing "Oh!" with one hand over his mouth and making those limp wristed pointing gestures. He pleaded with the Company's ballet master. Do I really have to do this? He did. Sure, he got to do some impressive spins at the end of this solo but it made him look like a complete sissy boy. It was a straight dancer's nightmare.
For several moments now, Fleming stepped forth, speaking half audibly to the never seen Emma out of sight trying to have her unfreeze the humiliating image on the screen. It took X a minute but finally he saw the big picture and sighed. "Fine. Laugh at me. Don't take me seriously because I'm the ballet guy. Fine."
Abruptly, the image on the 20 foot screen switched to a still picture of X as Tybalt in a production of Romeo and Juliet, in white tights and blood red velvet top, sword in hand. There were a series of beeps and clicks as 20 different dimensions popped up on the still picture indicating that Xavier Li was six foot one with a 36 inch inseam and 27 inch waist, etc.
Talking right over the now diminishing snickers of the attendees in the room, Devereaux continued from the podium, "That might not seem like a driven super thief willing to take on the entire world's crime fighting establishment but we couldn't just rule him out because he's a ballet dancer. He's perhaps the best physical match for the Red X of the clip. Look at that physique. But when we checked on his whereabouts at the times of the crimes we quickly found multiple instances where the location of a crime seems to have been impossible for this Xavier Li, even if he had the, uh . . . temperment or the intention for it. She reeled off three different jobs that Red X had pulled that seemed to have been impossible for Xavier Li to have committed.
"We also reviewed security camera footage at all the banks robbed by Red X and couldn't find one instance of this ballet dancer on camera in the months leading up to the robberies."
X smiled as he sipped a green tea. Utilizing the cloaking ring and using Park's private jet and a series of programs to create the fake impression of his being in his apartment had paid off. There had even been four different jobs he'd pulled in Jump City that he did while Jump City Ballet was performing. He'd hacked into vault cameras and reset them an hour ahead the night before then set them back after the robberies. The result was that it seemed the robberies had taken place at a certain hour while X was supposedly on stage in tights.
But, actually, after his character had supposedly been killed in the first act of the ballet, he'd immediately snuck out and robbed the Wells Fargo headquarters and another time the Berkshire Hathaway offices and been backstage at the ballet again, joking around with other dancers by the third act each time. Devereaux listed those as among the ones that ruled him out.
He'd also made use of the cloaking ring to get on board Park's private jet as red haired Derek Swift or brunette white boy Chip Goodly, anyone but Xavier Li. And he'd had a hologram set up in his apartment showing Xavier Li lounging on the couch and occasionally looking out the window. He'd even used a program making pre-set posts to different web sites so that the Xavier Li hologram seemed to be on the internet, too.
He took another sip from his green tea and smirked at the image on his big screen tv. Of course I didn't do those jobs, Interpol. I'm a ballet dancer. I don't . . . rob people. Besides, I was home at that time.
X smiled. The old man would be proud of him for being smart and staying a step ahead.
As he watched, now much less worried and able to enjoy the presentation, Devereaux went on to say how the Red X physique was also roughly matched by a notorious Italian thief, "Il Gattopardo", the leopard.
On one of his first recognized jobs, this all black clad thief, though with no skull mask or cape, had hidden a bag of jewels in a tree near the scene because alarms had gone off. Police only realized this because a guard later found a diamond on the ground near the entrance and they saw a couple more that he'd dropped up on a high tree branch. The press had jumped on the similarity to how a leopard in the wild kills a deer and then stores it up on a tree branch and dubbed him "Il Gattopardo". The giant screen showed one of the few images of any sort of Il Gattopardo, smart phone footage of a slender cat burglar sort dressed all in black who, after breaking into Milan's premier jewelry store, was captured racing away across rooftops. Il Gattopardo even had a record for picking on international, too big to fail banks. This, of course, had done nothing to hurt his popularity among the Italian citizenry. The papers there loved him.
"Incidentally," Devereaux noted, "There was some thought, in the beginning, that Matteo Furlani must be Il Gattopardo but Furlani was recently jailed on several minor charges while Il Gattopardo continued his crime spree and subsequent bits of film of Il Gattopardo make clear that the five foot ten, 210 pound Furlani simply could not be slender Il Gattopardo."
Interpol had no idea who Il Gattopardo was. They had no clue other than that he was around 1.85 meters tall, slender and a terrific athlete. They believed that he was from northern Italy as that was where his jobs seemed to be centered. But he could just as well have been French or German, Le Leopard or Der Leopard. There had been widespread speculation that he'd died in a car crash and explosion escaping from a spectacular job five years ago. But, as X listened, Devereaux expounded upon a new theory that Il Gattopardo's supposed death had been faked. They never did recover a body. And his disappearance had just been setting the stage for his moving his base elsewhere and taking on a new identity, becoming this Red X, or X Rosso if Italian.
Devereaux even explained a theory for how there had first been a smaller Red X before the one working know. They guessed that Il Gattopardo knew the maker of the suit and that the maker had either bowed out or Il Gattopardo had taken it from him.
"So . . . Il Gattopardo may be our Red X?" said Fleming returning to the podium.
"It's possible," said Devereaux retreating a few feet away.
"Rome," said Fleming pointing to some agents to the left in the middle of the amphitheater classroom. "I want you to be the leads in investigating this possibility. What would fit with Il Gattopardo actually being alive? What would be corollaries of his moving base? I want you to squeeze every molecule of air out of this question within a week. Alright, let's take another break. 20 minutes this time," declared Fleming and the room quickly emptied.
Agent Heller went down the hall and got another one of the special truffle and hazelnut coffees and a lobster meat hors d'oeuvre. They catered these things really well. She sidled up to O'Malley and found Calloway from London, the two Japanese guys in tan suits and two officials from Singapore standing in a circle next to them.
"That Xavier Li didn't seem like much of a threat, did he?" chuckled Calloway.
Heller rolled her eyes. This again. "It's just a role."
"What?" asked O'Malley between ravenous bites of the hors d'oeuvres.
"I-I follow ballet. He's sort of low level famous, that Xavier Li, famous for a young ballet guy, anyway. And . . . it's pretty clear that he's not gay."
"He sure pranced convincingly for a guy who's not gay," snickered O'Malley.
Heller sighed. "Well, it's just a role. It's just like acting. He's gotta pretend to be a tough guy or a wuss or whatever. Was Javier Bardem a psycho because he played one in No Country for Old Men? Was Daniel Day Lewis super greedy because his character was greedy in There Will Be Blood?"
"So, maybe he's not a poof," shrugged Calloway. "So what?"
"So . . he was the best physical match for Red X. We shouldn't casually throw that away because he's a ballet dancer. And, you know what else? I watched those brief clips of him fighting real close. And something occurred to me. When-when you watch that Red X move, what do you see?"
Calloway and O'Malley both shrugged.
"Even in those shadowy clips, I see a ballet dancer fighting. In those short clips, watch how perfect his feet always are. Always positioned just right. He's never off balance. Watch how he glides. He takes on much bigger guys and isn't overpowered, in part, because he's moving like a dancer meeting some guy's arm strength with his arm and his torso and his hips. I took ballet into my teens and you pick up on these things, how people move, how they walk. Most people are slightly awkward. They are. It sounds terribly snobbish but go to a mall and watch people walking around. They waddle. They shuffle. They come down with a thud on every step. They're off balance. They walk with feet pointed out. They walk pigeon toed. And they don't run any better. This Red X moves perfectly. Perfectly. He moves like a ballet guy."
The two Japanese guys grinned and nodded and muttered back and forth. Calloway took a bite of his hors d'oeuvre and then exhaled. "Or a track guy like most of those physical matches were. And there's still the matter of the dates and times, Heller. They say he can be shown to be elsewhere on a lot of 'em."
"I know but maybe-"
"Excuse me," said the shorter official from Singapore on the other side of Calloway. "I couldn't help but notice that you're taking Xavier Li more seriously as a candidate to be Red X," he said to Heller.
She nodded. "I'm . . just not ready to dismiss him so quickly."
"He's from Singapore, you know," he said with a hint of pride.
"Oh, that's right. I read that on line," muttered Heller.
"We had a master thief much like Red X in Singapore. He mostly robbed penthouse apartments but also a few mansions, an armored car and a luxury yacht. The Singapore press called him 'The Acrobat' because he seemed to move effortlessly up and down high rise buildings. He was never caught. And he seemed to go after the same sort of targets as Red X, the CEO's of the big banks and people like that."
"The Acrobat knocked over 16 super rich guys and some other targets in a little over six years. He was a huge deal in Singapore. You can imagine the pressure we were under to apprehend him. After a while, with all the press coverage, any theory, no matter how wild, got taken seriously on the off chance that it would help us catch The Acrobat. So-"
"Do you want to tell them about Chen?" the taller official interrupted with a laugh.
"I'm getting to it," grinned the shorter one. "So, we're under pressure like what turns coal into diamonds to catch this guy and one day this really highly regarded cop, Lieutenant Chen, says he's got it. He says he's solved The Acrobat case. This was in a meeting about it where everyone else arrived despairing at how we still didn't have shit on this guy climbing up the outside of apartment towers and robbing the richest people, people who were all complaining to the heads of the department. This Chen says 'I know who it is!'. Everyone's ecstatic. There was applause. We're ready to pop the corks on champagne bottles. What a relief! Then he tells us, he says it's . . . this 14 year old boy. Every jaw in the room dropped."
"Ya gotta understand. This guy, Chen, he had a great reputation. He'd made some big cases and he was known to be incorruptible. He was seen as a guy with a chance to move to the top of the entire department. That all went down the shitter in that one moment."
"He just poured gasoline all over his career and tossed a match on it," laughed the taller one. I actually liked the guy but he was radioactive after that. You couldn't be seen with him."
"He was so fixated," laughed the shorter one. "No objection bothered him. People pointed out that The Acrobat robberies had been going on for almost four years so . . . that meant his chosen perp had started doing these complex jobs when he was . . . ten years old?! What?!"
There were light chuckles all around the circle.
The shorter one leaned forward. "The kicker is this. The 14 year old boy that Lt. Chen said had started doing these robberies when he was 10 was . . . Xavier Li!"
Now there were guffaws of genuine surprise. "Wh-what?!"
"They even told him that this boy had just enrolled in a ballet school thinking that would prove to Chen that we couldn't possibly take this boy seriously," laughed the taller one. "But his reaction was to shout that you couldn't let this boy take ballet. You couldn't let him get near high society and all the super rich in Singapore."
"He was screaming and shouting," laughed the shorter one. "I thought he was gonna have to be sedated. Remember?" he grinned at the taller one before imitating Chen's voice and gesticulating wildly. "You can't let him near those people! You don't understand what you're dealing with! You don't understand what you're dealing with! You can't stop him!"
"A-a 14 year old boy?" asked Heller.
"Yeah, a boy who wanted to run around in tights all day," chuckled the taller one.
"What did he have on him?" asked Heller, more and more interested.
The shorter one laughed and shook his head. "That was another part of it. He didn't really have anything on him, just the vaguest most insubstantial theories, really just his hunch about the kid. This seemed to start when the kid did this-this initiation kind of thing to Chen. I mean, it was all plausible on a certain level, but any judge would throw it out in five seconds."
"Did-did Xavier Li have a criminal record?" asked Heller.
Both Singapore agents shook their head. "In fact," continued the taller one, "He was valedictorian of his class to that point and his father, Xuezhi Li was a legend in the Singapore Police Department. The father was this skinny guy but an incredible fighter and absolutely fearless. He had this air about him. I remember one sergeant describing how he and his partner busted in on some crook's hideout and there were seven bad guys in there ready to fight but he felt fine because Xuezhi Li was there, too. And, supposedly Li, the father, just destroyed all seven guys. Hurt them all bad."
"That's what he was known for, too, not just winning on points, but knockouts, hurting guys bad," said the shorter one.
"Well, he died, or at least, disappeared, when the kid was 8," said the taller one. "He was undercover on one of those giant freighters, one of those Maersk things with a hundred containers piled on the decks. The waters outside Singapore are like a freeway full of those things. Well, Li had gone undercover on one. I never could get anyone to tell me just what the hell he was investigating. It was found just circling around in the ocean with nobody on board still alive. They never recovered Xuezhi Li's body but it looked like he killed the other 17 guys with his bare hands. No guns. No knives. Just dead by hand, really really dead. Seriously. There were Li's bloody hand prints on railings and doors all over. Oh my god, the pictures! Guys with eyeballs hanging out of their sockets. Guys with their-their intestines pulled out of 'em, with their heads crushed against the corners of freight containers. Blood everywhere. The goriest shit you've ever seen."
"So . . . " queried Heller. "How does Xavier Li go from being the son of a legendary policeman and, what'd you say, valedictorian of his class up to then to one of your best officers thinking he's a one boy crime wave?"
The two Singapore officials just shrugged. It was clear to Heller that they didn't take Xavier Li seriously, either. They would never get the image of him prancing and making those limp wristed gestures out of their heads. They just thought it was funny that he was mistakenly regarded as a threat before and was brought up to be laughed at again seven years later. Xavier Li, the perpetual false threat.
But Heller couldn't stop thinking about the possibilities. She didn't want to say this to the others, but she had attended performances of Jump City Ballet and Metropolis Ballet featuring Xavier Li and audiences absolutely loved him. There was something about him. She couldn't put her finger on it. It wasn't only how he looked in tights or how he could leap. Especially playing a romantic figure or a tough guy, he had a charisma about him that she'd never seen another dancer match. Was this what that lieutenant Chen in Singapore had seen?
There was one more presentation but Heller couldn't completely invest her thoughts in any of it. They didn't seem to be making any real progress and here was a perfect suspect in strikingly handsome Xavier Li only with some good alibis. You just had to see if you could break the alibis.
She approached Fleming right after the last presentation. She introduced herself, Agent Heller, sir. She explained how Xavier Li had been a suspect in the robberies by The Acrobat in Singapore. Fleming said he'd heard of the case. Xavier Li? The ballet guy? Really?
Heller nodded. She left out the part about his being 10 years old at the start of it. She said that, with Fleming's permission, she'd like to try and crack Xavier Li's alibis for the robberies. He okayed it and signed forms giving her an unlimited expense account for whatever she needed. He didn't even give her a standard warning about abusing it. Heller didn't say anything to O'Malley or Calloway or the agents from Singapore.
At her hotel room that night, she emailed agent Devereaux and asked for a detailed breakdown of Xavier Li's alibis for the 47 jobs attributed to Red X. It came the next morning. Xavier Li had seemingly ironclad explanations for being somewhere else for 31 of the 47.
Heller sighed.
That was worse than she'd been expecting. But first she decided to do a full background on him.
She'd done this before. Speak to almost everyone who ever knew the target. Maybe leave close associates to the very end, people who would certainly call and tell him that they were being questioned.
Heller had fake credentials made up right away, made reservations at the best hotel where she could get a room on short notice and booked a flight. She was Emma Heller of Dance Magazine, doing a story on rising ballet star, Xavier Li. She had her name and Dance Magazine put on a plastic card that she wore on a lanyard around her neck. She got her self a microrecorder and a leather bound reporter's notebook.
She flew to Singapore and checked in at the Ritz-Carlton, shocked at how hot and humid it was compared to Metropolis.
She spent the first night in her hotel room eating 5 star hotel room service and going over all the PDF's of documents she'd had sent to her. She told Interpol liaison and records to get her everything, everything that was available on Xavier Li, his father Xuezhi Li, his mother, both sets of grandparents, and everything about the regular school he attended, the ballet school he attended, the Singapore Dance Theatre, The Hong Kong Ballet and now the Jump City Ballet. She also told them to be ready because she'd be asking them for more, branching out towards whatever she saw that interested her.
She started reading at 4 p.m. with a break for dinner and other for a special dessert, a mille feuille, she'd had sent up.
There was his birth certificate. Eight pounds eight ounces. There was a picture of the father and mother with their new baby boy. There was never another picture of the father smiling like that. He wasn't grim. He was a man on whom responsibility had made a deep imprint. His lips curled a bit in other photos but that was about it. She stared at every image of him. He was good looking but didn't seem to care about it. He was a man you could trust. She read his file. There were commendations and ribbons and the like. But he didn't try to rise in the ranks. He took on more dangerous assignments. Undercover, some odd phrasing of its status. Minister level authority? What was that? There were comments in his file that he would never have gotten to see, from other officers. One guy said, " There's not another man I want going through that door with me than Xuezhi Li." And then he was gone.
The mother was pretty, she had some kind of slightly odd job in an office. It looked like she'd started as a secretary and then been promoted but they couldn't just call her the same thing as they called they people with the college degrees. Wouldn't want to have to admit that the degrees mean nothing. Anyway, she was doing pretty well.
Heller liked her, too. She had a nice smile but she never put too much work into it. The kind of woman who just couldn't easily lie.
The grandparents didn't leave her with any particular impression one way or the other, though she did see later some note in the boy's school file to the effect that the grandfather on the father's side had taught him to fight. He'd probably taught his father, too, the guy who wasn't afraid of anyone.
She expected to find a sharp break in the boy's behavior at age 8, upon the disappearance of his father. But it wasn't quite like that. The boy was never quite with the program. In every picture at school he was wearing long, black pants and a long sleeve white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up with a simple black wristband watch. Every other boy in class was wearing this goofy looking school uniform of cheap, oversized shorts and a crappy looking short sleeve shirt, white with a light blue collar and piping. He was also a bit taller than the other boys.
He stuck out in every way, taller, not wearing the uniform the others all were and while the others almost all had that good boy or good girl slightly pleading smile in pictures, he didn't. He was a strikingly handsome boy. That stuck Heller right away, too. He hadn't been the ugly duckling who'd grown into a ballet dancing swan. She looked closely at all the photos of him at school. There were a few where he was laughing and he always seemed to be beside two other boys, a Hao Ong and a Yong Peng. They were his best friends. She tried to remember everything from those body language reading courses. His expression, his bearing it wasn't arrogant. There was a feeling of confidence mixed with . . what was it? Dedication? Honor even? She wasn't quite sure but his face jumped out from a sea of other boys.
And right from the start the teachers' comments in his file were praise but alloyed with something like worry or discomfort. He wasn't entirely with the program, even in his first year. And they were upset that he got into some fights, always carefully off school grounds so that they couldn't reprimand him. It did seem to slowly pick up after his father's disappearance.
By contrast, the staff at the ballet school absolutely adored him. The instructors were effusive in their praise of not just his ability but his dedication. One note said that two other boys had hurt themselves trying to rehearse and train as much as Xavier Li. Of course they loved that they had a super good looking boy who could leap out of the studio but they were practically getting moist talking about how good he was partnering the ballerinas. And there were multiple pictures of him and a girl, Sun Tok giving each other that young love look in some of the pictures. Heller made a note to talk to her.
If he was this Acrobat thief and he was still doing it while at the ballet academy you'd have never guessed it from any of his pictures or anything put in his file by the staff. The rebel edge seemed to have gone away when he became a ballet dancer.
Then he signed up with Sinagpore Dance Theatre, the biggest company in the City but they were giving him nothing for roles and making him wait behind dancers that he was obviously better than. After a year, he couldn't take it and jumps to join Hong Kong Ballet. They realize what an amazing boy they've got and give him big roles right away. He starts to become a star. He spends a couple years there then, out of the blue, when the company's in Jump City, he leaves them and signs up with Jump City Ballet where he's been for two years since, becoming more of a star.
And they film those two amazing commercials, him practically curb stomping some kid supposed to be the top high school player in the country, going out on an inner city basketball court in his tights and top and drubbing the kid. Then he goes on the field in batting practice for Jump City's team, the MLB champs and catches a ball over the fence like no one's ever seen, throws 95 mph and hits a couple homers.
What can't this guy do?
But, where's the angry edge? If he's Red X, what's driving the guy who succeeds at everything to put on that crazy suit and rob these banks and CEO's? The edge hasn't been there since he left regular school. It hasn't been visible. What's really going on?
She stared and stared at those grade school photos of him trying to infer exactly what was going through his head. Suddenly, she glanced at the clock and saw that it was 2:17. Holy shit. She went to bed resolving to go to his school the next day.