Author: Chris Mulder
Email: mulders@mindspring.com
Rated: G
For my good friend, Annette. Thanks for everything!
* * * * * * *
To most people, a hand-held tape recorder is a toy, or a tool, or yet another electronic device good only for breeding clutter and dust. But in the hands of Lois Lane, it’s a weapon. She uses hers in a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way, and that is why she and I recently found ourselves sitting in a cold car, during an even colder night, on one of Metropolis’s least welcoming streets. We were waiting for, and hoping to catch in the act, a drug dealer or two–people who, generally speaking, don’t give a rat’s behind about things like truth or justice, or indeed anyone’s way but their own.
“Clark, are you watching that door? I can’t watch this one and that one at the same time, you know!”
“Yes, Lois, I’m watching it. But, I’m also watching you and you’re shivering. Please take my coat.”
“No, Clark, I’ll be fine.”
I could hear the defiance in her voice, and knew she was trying to convince herself even more than reassure me. And I wished, once again, that our relationship was far enough along that she could trust me … just a little.
“You don’t sound fine, Lois. Your teeth are starting to chatter.”
I got the look I knew only too well. The look that said, Don’t push it, Kent!
“That’s excitement, Clark,” she replied, her tone almost patronizing. “When you’ve been in the news business as long as I have, you’ll recognize the difference.”
She turned back to keep an eye on “her” door, and I was able to grin without being observed. That’s Lois, for you; tough, independent, smart, and tenacious. She wasn’t going to let go of a possible page-one for anything–even if this particular page-one was looking more and more like a no-show.
“Don’t you think,” I said, trying to keep both our minds off the cold and its effect on her, “you could tell me how you got this tip? We’ve been sitting here for two hours, with no dinner, watching a couple of warehouse doors, and all you’ve said to me since slapping me on the arm in the Planet’s lobby is, ‘Let’s hit it’ or ‘Watch that door.'”
She considered my proposal for a moment and then seemed to agree because she reached down to her voluminous bag and pulled out her tape recorder. Since we’d been working together for nearly four months by now, I’d seen this and her other gadgets before, of course, so I wasn’t surprised.
“Clark, I managed to get on tape the plans for a huge drug deal that is supposed to take place here tonight!” She waved the tape recorder in my face as she spoke, but even without that gesture I would have known she was excited, just by the sound of her voice.
“How did you do that? Lois, what have you been up to now?”
“Nothing! That is, nothing illegal. Well, not exactly illegal, but if we can see who these guys are, we can help the cops nail them. And, get a nice headline for the Planet at the same time.”
I had to smile at her ability to combine the Planet’s interests, and her own, with civic responsibility. “Very true, Lois, but I still don’t know how you got your information.”
She was bursting to tell me, I knew, but I also knew better than to push too hard. It needed to be her idea.
“Okay, I’ll tell you, but you can’t tell anybody else. Swear!”
I promised with all due gravity, and had barely gotten the words out before she started on her tale.
“You see, Clark, I was gathering some background information for that story I, uh, we are working on–the one about possible OSHA violations at construction sites. You know, the ones that are closely, but obscurely, linked to a certain county commissioner?”
I nodded but she scarcely needed even that much encouragement.
“I’ve been hanging around hardware stores and lumber yards, and–”
“What excuse did you give for being there?” I also knew better than to interrupt, but my curiosity got the better of me.
“What? Oh, different things … it doesn’t matter, Clark. What matters is that in one hardware store, I noticed that some guys would come in and always head towards a certain area near the back of the store. So, I went there one day when they weren’t around and hid my tape recorder near that spot. It’s voice activated so–”
“But Lois, that kind of evidence isn’t admissable in–”
“I’m not the DA, Clark. I’m a reporter! All I would need to do is cite an anonymous source, and besides, stop interrupting me.”
“Sorry.” Once again I was impressed by her intuition, and her nerve. No one but Lois would have thought such a gathering worthy of investigation. Most people, if they’d noticed it at all, would probably think those men were discussing the latest ball scores or the size of the fish that got away last weekend. Only for Lois did these things pan out anyway, but …. If she had been caught! I didn’t want to think about that.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I went back a couple of days later and sure enough I had something. There were three, maybe four men talking about their next drug shipment.”
Taking my life into my own hands, I just had to ask, “But why would these guys risk being overheard in a public place like a store, Lois?”
“Clark, I don’t know! Maybe they do it because it is so public, because they don’t trust each other. Maybe, they all live near there. Maybe they have a thing about plumbing supplies! How should I know!” She turned away, crossing her arms in front of her and making a point of looking out the window, not at me.
The silence lengthened. Finally, I got up enough nerve to make a comment. “You must have found a really good place to hide the tape recorder, since it wasn’t found for two whole days.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” she said, more to the window than to me. “There was some kind of cardboard display thing on the counter, and I stuck it inside of that. I figured no one would be messing with the inside of it.”
“That was good thinking, Lois. They certainly didn’t find it.”
“Yeah, well ….”
“Um, could we listen to the tape? If you want to, that is.”
“I think you should watch your door.”
I gave her my best smile, and put a little pleading in my voice. “Actually, I can listen while I watch the door. A lot of people, mostly women, think that guys can’t handle multitasking. I know this because I overheard some of the women in the newsroom talking about–”
“Okay, okay! We’ll listen to it. Just don’t take your eyes off that door.”
“Yes, ma’am. I mean, I won’t.”
“All right.”
As instructed, I was keeping my eyes on my assigned door, but I could hear Lois fiddling with the buttons on the recorder. Eventually, the somewhat garbled sounds of voices, intermixed with various clangs, bangs, knocks and thuds, and overlaid with the monotonous tones of Musak, flowed from the small machine.
Words were hard to distinguish above and around the sounds of a busy hardware store, even for someone with Super ears, but Lois was certain of what she’d heard: the drug buy was tonight and it was going to take place in that warehouse we were so assiduously watching.
While I had to agree with her on most of the salient points, I was pretty sure about one thing–we were watching the wrong building. She had heard Walden Street, but I knew now that the drug deal was actually going down on Wallen Street. What I didn’t know was what I was going to do about it.
Lois, thank goodness, was obviously unaware of my quandry. “So, Clark, now you understand why it’s so important that we stay here, so matter how cold it gets.”
I heard the censorious note in her voice and knew she was referring to my earlier comment about the climate within the car, but I refused to rise to that bait.
“Yes, I do, Lois, but–”
“But what, Clark?”
“Well, they’re not here, yet, and on the tape it sounded like this was supposed to have started already. Of course there was a lot of interference, so….”
Lois’s impatience was coming off her in waves, and I found myself unable to continue.
“Clark,” she began, and I knew from her tone that I was going to get another famous lecture to the rookie from the Planet’s best investigative reporter, “these things happen. It’s been three days since I made that tape. Maybe they changed the time since then. When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you’ll understand that better. A good reporter has to be willing to stick with the story, no matter how inconvenient it might get.”
I thought about that for a moment. She was right, of course, and if I hadn’t known what I knew, I, too, might have been content to wait a while longer. Unfortunately….
“Lois, what if we, uh you, that is, we have the name of the street wrong? I mean, wouldn’t that explain why they aren’t here … yet?”
I watched as her expression went from annoyance to disbelief to dismissal to thoughtful consideration to introspection, as she replayed in her head the tape she had no doubt listened to dozens of times by now, to calculated analysis before arriving, all in a matter of seconds, at a final decision. She was amazing!
“No, Clark. I’ve listened to this tape over and over, and I’m sure this is the right place.”
Well, I thought with familiar resignation, that seemed to be that. Of course, if a certain Superguy were here, she would listen to him. The cloud of gloom that usually seetled over me whenever I thought about how much Lois was attracted to my flashy alterego became thicker than ever. I found myself pondering, yet again, what in the world I was going to do to resolve this ridiculous situation I had created for myself. I probably could have enjoyed a truly depressing red, yellow and blue funk, if I hadn’t heard Lois shiver again. As always, the thought of Lois in trouble was enough to drive every other care or consideration away.
Time to put on your thinking cap, Kent, or the love of your life might very well freeze to death right next to you!
“Lois, I’m hungry. How about you?”
“Clark, how can you even think of food at a time like this?”
“Easily. My stomach is growling at me–even louder than Perry does when it’s getting close to press time.”
Lois looked at me pityingly–the all-knowing senior journalist forced to endure once again the ravings of her naïve, inexperienced junior. I decided to press my case before she had time to reject the idea all together. The only thing harder than persuading Lois to acknowledge another’s point of view was getting her to change her mind once she’d made it up.
“There’s a diner not two blocks from here. I can be over there and back before you know it.”
“But, what if they come while you’re gone?”
“Then you’ll get the byline all for yourself!”
She grinned at that. She turned her face away, as if to hide it, but I’d seen it and I knew I had won.
“Okay. What would you like?”
It took a couple of minutes to get her order straight and about three more minutes beyond that to convince her that I wouldn’t need my overcoat on my food gathering mission …
“You’ll freeze!”
“I won’t–I’ll be running.”
“Yes, you will.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Yes, you will.”
… I just love these intellectual exchanges that we share! Eventually, though, I was on my way to the diner. As soon as I’d gone around the corner, I looked for a dark place from which to take off and was soon soaring over Metropolis as Superman.
It didn’t take long to locate the real address of the drug deal and sure enough, there they were. I’d been lucky enough to spot a policeman on my way and had flown him to the site with me. He was predictably thrilled by the flight (“Wait til I tell my wife and kids!”), but had been all business when it came time to make the arrests. As soon as the criminals had been subdued and I’d given my statement (“I was just flying overhead when I heard …”) I was on my way to that diner.
A mere 21 1/2 minutes after having left Lois in the car I was back with bags of food and knocking on the driver’s side window.
“That was fast. What did you do–fly?”
You know, a couple of months ago a remark like that would have made me wonder if Lois was on to me, but now ….
“Funny, Lois! You know I save the flying for the really important missions.”
“Ha, ha. Thanks. You’d better get in the car, you know, just in case somebody sees you.”
“Okay.”
I obliged her by sliding into my seat once more and we both started eating our sandwiches. Mine tasted especially good–probably because Lois was warm and being fed, and because she’d accepted even this small amount of help from me.
We ate in companionable silence. Lois was undoubtedly planning her next move to get further evidence against either these drug dealers or the OSHA offenders. I, on the other hand, was wondering how to let Lois know that there was no longer any reason to be here. Not that I was in any hurry to leave. It’s not often that I get to spend such pleasant moments with my almost partner.
All good things must come to an end, eventually. “Uh, Lois, do you think we could turn on the radio? I’d like to hear the ball scores.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” She took a last slurp through her straw and leaned forward to push the “on” button of her radio. She pushed every channel button at least once, and some of them twice, before she found a station she liked. We listened to the end of one song and all of another before the news came on.
It took every ounce of will power I possessed not to reach for her hand when she heard the news of the arrest–on Wallen Street–of 5 drug dealers and their two armed bodyguards. I have to admit that she took it very well, but I knew she was disappointed. It would have been quite a coup to be able to nab drug dealers while investigating substandard building practices, but–
“Well, that’s that,” Lois said, keeping her voice under control. “I’m sorry I dragged you out for nothing, Clark.”
Suddenly, the Lois who had shared a casual meal with me was gone, and in her place was the professional and distant Lois Lane, The Daily Planet’s best reporter. Once again we had taken one step forward and were now taking two steps back.
“Lois–” I ventured, but she wasn’t going to let me sympathize with her.
“Clark, it’s no big deal. This isn’t the first time a tip hasn’t panned out and it won’t be the last. In fact, if I had a dollar for every dead end I have followed, well, I’d be able to retire early.”
Her laugh sounded a bit false to my ears, but if she wanted to maintain this pretense of nonchalance, I was going to help her. “It was a good idea, though, Lois, and it could have turned into a headline.”
She was gathering the remnants of her supper together and stuffing them into one of the bags with a little more force than was strictly necessary. “Nice try, Clark, but the only headline being written here tonight is, ‘Reporter Gets Stiffed By Her Tip.'”
I had to chuckle–I couldn’t help it. Leave it to Lois and her resilient spirit! I glanced at her and saw the beginnings of a smile forming on her lovely lips. Made me wish I could kiss her. But since that wasn’t likely to happen, at least not any time soon, I figured I’d better think about something else. And, it wouldn’t hurt to give Lois’s thoughts another direction either.
“Well, you know, Lois, maybe Superman will give you an exclusive interview about how he nabbed those drug dealers. That would be the next best thing.”
Her smile grew and became even a little secretive, as if she’d just thought of something wonderful, and unshareable.
“Yes, maybe he will,” she agreed softly. She turned the key to start the car, then pulled my coat off her lap and tossed it in my direction. “Thanks, Clark! I don’t need this anymore.”
I accepted my coat with as much grace as I could muster, while mentally kicking myself for having introduced my Kryptonian counterpart into the conversation. It could have been me, Clark, consoling Lois in her hour of need. It should be me she turned to when she needed help or companionship. I would have willingly applied for the position of chief-shoulder-to-cry-on. But, no! Instead I had to go and remind her of … *him*!
I hadn’t realized that I had slumped into my seat, or that I was staring out the car window at nothing, at least not until the touch of Lois’s hand on my arm brought me back from my guilt trip.
“You look tired, Clark. How about if I pick you up at nine tomorrow, uh, today and we’ll go get some breakfast. This will be my treat, okay? We’ve still got those OSHA violators to catch, you know.”
Now it was my turn to smile. Lois had just invited me to breakfast and was still willing to work with me on a story.
“Okay, Lois. Thanks!”
She was smiling and the guy in the cape was nowhere in sight. Life, once again, held a great deal of promise–I could live on one of her smiles for a long time.