It took me ten minutes to get to the LexTower from the long break I took at the coffee shop. The streets were oddly empty for 7 in the morning, a disturbing silence permeating the air and giving me a terrible sense of…inevitability.
I pushed my way through the revolving doors that led into the cavernous, marble-laden lobby of the LexCorp Tower. The receptionist's desk lay straight ahead of me, the masthead of the Luthor organization bolted to the wall high above the desk. The footfalls fell evenly on the bright marbled floor, echoing ominously across the void, bouncing off the walls of the atrium and back to me.
I was alone in the lobby. And it scared me.
I approached the elevator cautiously, half-expecting some ungodly creature to jump out when the doors opened and attack me. I hesitated only briefly but pressed the orange glowing 'up' button unsteadily.
The dark bronze colored doors slid open almost instantly, effortlessly, and I stepped in. I turned around and pressed the button marked 'OD'. There were two ways to get to Lex's office. The way that most boot-licking employees and the star-hungry press used was a miserly set of stairs behind rusty gray doors labeled 'fire escape'. The other way that one could access Lex's office was by a special bronze-bedecked express elevator which went from the top floor to the ground level in less than five seconds. Two ways to get to his office, both of them directly in front of him. Yeah…Lex was paranoid like that.
The elevator lurched forward and the inset speakers in the ceiling played Mozart's Jupiter 40 at a modest volume. I held the articles about Lex's…business associates tightly in my right hand, and found I was starting to shake nervously. Can't think of this now, Allen. You've got a job to do and if you fuck it up you're dead.
The elevator lurched to a stop, and the lights flickered for a moment, and I heard gears grinding for a minute. Then the doors slid open, revealing a darkened lobby and further up, the double-glass doors that led into Lex's office.
As usual the glass doors leading into the office were unlocked, but I couldn't see inside the office; the lights were off. The lobby lights were on, however, bathing the elevator and a few feet inside Lex's office in a harsh blue tone.
What other light there was seeping into Lex's darkened office was from the massive fluorescent capital letter G across the roof of the Galaxy Broadcasting Building next door. I exhaled laboriously, nervously, and wipe the sweat from my brow. Fear washed over me like a raging current, and I found myself unable to turn away from the glimmering cityscape and the long black desk that lay before the windows.
I found my way to one of the small leather chairs before Lex's desk, sat, pulled out the folded articles from my back pocket and browsed through them momentarily.
Behind me, I heard a winded gust as one of the glass doors leading into the office slid open.
"Allen," the voice said, pleased and aghast at the same time. "What can I do for you?"
I slid the articles down through the opening at the top of the Oxford, secured them hastily in my waistband, and stood to see Lex standing confidently before me. He wore his trademark black suit, trousers, tie and shoes, and a dark green Oxford underneath. The tie was stapled neatly to his broad chest by a small gleaming, capital letter L tie-tack. On closer inspection, as he moved past me to his desk, I saw there were three diamonds in the tie-tack; one at the pinnacle, the other at the vertex of the two lines, and the last one at the end of the horizontal bar.
"Something to drink?" Lex asked as he sauntered to the liquor cabinet.
"Uh, no thanks," I said, politely waving my hand in dismissal. He turned away, poured the amber liquid into a waiting glass and returned to his desk.
"Suit yourself," Lex said, swirling the Scotch as he went. Finally, he reached his desk and sat in the large brown chair behind it.
"So," he said, exhaling, crossing his hands together and bringing them down dully on the desk. A large grin creased across his face. "What shall we talk about?"
"Well," I said, pulling the folded and ink-stained articles out of my back pocket. I unfolded them and glanced through them hastily, and then slid them across the table to Lex. He sipped his Scotch and set the empty glass aside. Pulling the crumpled articles to him, Lex narrowed his gaze into a scowl and read through the first article—Dr. Gretchen Kelley. I waited for a response.
Anything. Part of me expected him to cheerfully toss them aside. Another part expected that he would pull out a gun and shoot me on sight. And another part just wished I hadn't done this in the first place.
But I had to. I needed it. I needed to find out the truth. Partly to make Morgan Edge think I wasn't another brain-dead college youth, heedlessly cruising through life. Secondly, I needed to know if I could trust Luthor. There was a creeping subtext in Kent's articles of…truth—inexorable, inescapable and frightfully close to home.
He had gone through Kelley's sheet without so much as a raised eyebrow. He flipped the page to the next article: Melissa Dugan.
And then Sasha Green.
And then Dabny Donovan. With each page turn, Lex's face deepened in concentration. People talked about how the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing people that he didn't exist, and the saying was similar for Luthor. His greatest trick was convincing people that he had always been of a world of privilege. He was born the greater son of lesser parents, and bore the over-perfected and over-obsessed intellect and countenance of generations of exquisitely selective breeding and years of careful image-molding. His quality came from the gutter—from the years of making his own fortune after the death of his parents. His skin was pulled tightly over the square bones below; his eyes burned a dynamic green under the shade of sharp angled eyebrows. The dim lighting in his office glinted dully off his shorn head—the product of a singular genetic drawback in his entire body, that of male pattern baldness. The gears were turning.
I swallowed the collected saliva in my mouth, and pondered my next move.
Lex moved on to the next sheet of paper: The Contessa. His eyes narrowed almost immediately after turning the page and he exhaled laboriously. His mouth curled slowly downward in silent disapproval as he stared forebodingly down at the paper in his hands. Like a lion about to rip into a gazelle, I thought. I guessed that the Contessa evoked a feeling in Lex that Ivana evoked in Donald Trump. Billionaires and their wives…they sure don't like having to share their empire, do they?
Lex moved on to the next article: Paul Westfield. The Cadmus director who "created" Superboy in a manner of speaking.
The next article: Sydney Happersen. Lex's personal assistant for years upon years. The odd thing was…Lex didn't even read the Happersen article. He glanced at it for a scant second, flipped the page.
Finally, Lex came to the final article in the stack. Frank Berkowitz was once the mayor of Metropolis, but was taken out violently by an assassins' bullet. All the time I poured into researching the names Tim had sent me revealed nothing about Berkowitz's killer. The Ballistics report concluded that the bullet was fired from Metropolis S.C.U. standard-issue 9mm Glock.
"Where did you find these?" Lex asked motionlessly, his narrowed eyes still staring cryptically at papers before him.
"I, uh…research."
"Where?" Lex pondered grimly.
"Couple of places," I said hesitantly. "Library. The Daily Planet online archives."
"I see."
Lex took another look at the spread articles on his desk.
"And who have you told this to?"
"No one."
A beat. Luthor's eyes rolled upward in their sockets to see me, and an eyebrow drew itself up, silently questioning me.
"No one," I reiterated.
"Jesse?" Luthor asked curtly.
"No," I said sternly, as if defending him.
Going back to the papers, Luthor said, "I guessed as much."
At the utterance of the word, I shrunk back in my seat, inevitable defeat washing over me like a raging flood. Luthor went on.
"These are forgeries."
"But—"
"The reproduction quality is low," he said disapprovingly, almost…insulted. "The ink is smudged and blurred."
Luthor shuffled them into a neat pile, set them aside, and came back to me. "So what was the idea, Allen?"
"What?" I asked, confounded. "How did you…?"
"Tell me, Allen. What's on your so-called mind? Come to see if the rumors are true, at long last?"
"No," I murmured puzzlingly. Damn it, why did I say that?
Lex stood and finished off the Scotch. His straight form hid the rising sun, and made me cringe in my seat. Almost.
"All the things you've been…told and have thought…concern me," Lex said in a very paternal tone. "All the times I've told you that I would never do anything to hurt you. All the times I've said that you mean more to me than the world will know. Those times…I counted on you have good faith in me; to take my word for it. But I also trusted you to make your own decisions—"
"I haven't made a choice one way or the other, Lex," I said, realizing my footing was slipping.
"I understand that, Allen," Lex said, clasping his hands behind his back, still standing tall. "Someone's playing us both for fools, Allen," Lex said sinisterly. "I will have the answers you seek. Sooner or later."
Lex approached me, sitting on the edge of his desk. He extended a broad, adamantine hand to me, and I stared at it precariously for a moment, unsure whether to take it or spit on it.
All the things Tim gave me.
"All the things I've given you…"
"Take my hand…" Lex said steadily, his almost hypnotic voice completely focused on me. "Son…"
A chill overcame me, and I exhaled slowly. Why is this happening to me?
"You can trust me, Allen."
A tear streamed down my face. Luthor's hand seemed to waiver for a fleeting moment, and then righted itself. My head sunk, and I brought my own hand up to meet his.
"I…I trust you, Lex," I wheezed.
"I know, Allen….I know."
I left the office, walking slowly down the hall to the elevator in defeat. When the bronzen door slid open, I stepped in, pressed the ground-floor button, and waited for the doors to close. I looked up momentarily and saw Lex standing over his desk, with the phone cradled to his ear. He raised his head and stared at me menacingly. The nauseous feeling resurfaced in my stomach, and I expected him to just bolt out of his office and give me the pummeling of a lifetime. God knows he has the physique to do it.
The doors slid shut, and the elevator descended to earth.
Luthor watched O'Neill go, and then went to his phone.
"Eve?"
"Yes, Mr. Luthor?"
Luthor drew in a quick breath as a dark smile crept across his adamantine face. "I want the office numbers and hours for the following places, all of them at the University of Metropolis."
"Alright, go ahead sir."
"The Dean's office, the Multi-cultural center, the Student Life Board, and the Bursar's office."
"Is that all, sir?"
"Yes, that's it."
"Deadline?"
Luthor checked his watch—2:30 p.m.—and went back to the phone. "No rush. As long as I have them by 9 a.m. tomorrow."
"Alright, sir. I'll have them before then."
"Excellent. And Eve?"
"Yes, Mr. Luthor?"
"Find Franklin Stern. Ask himwhat he's willing to pay for thePlanet."
