The Phantom - 10. Epilogue

Nico opened the mailbox and set a collection of letters inside, tied with a red, satin bow. He tucked a card in the middle, tugged at the ribbon another second, and then closed the mailbox.

Looking back over his shoulder, he gave Marcell a sad smile, nodded, and then stepped away, leaning heavily upon his crutches. Ever since waking up after the Lair, his gimp leg ached and did not want to bend and straighten properly.

Outside, he held onto the car door and looked back. Gerry's apartment suited the man, a little old-fashioned, but strong, and with much, much more on the inside than there appeared. It was beautiful, and Nico had no place there.

"Nico ...."

"Si, mi amico," he replied. "Si."

With a hop, he settled onto the seat and leaned out to close the door. When they drove away, he didn't look back.

Across town, in the dispatch office, a box arrived, addressed to "Coyote-who-runs-no-more." The dispatchers stared at the box all day, waiting until the taxi driver in question came in with his daily take. They clustered around him eagerly, for Coyote never received packages.

Instead of an invoice, there was a piece of stationary, saying simply, "Thank you for taking care of my friends." There was no signature.

Chris beamed and waved at the camera, holding a microphone and standing beside Mark Marshall, Channel 11 News, as they reported on the latest doings in the Supers-Watch.

Mark put his arm around the young man's shoulders, happy himself that life had finally gotten back to normal, as normal as it was before the Phantom, at any rate. Gerry gave him the thumbs-up sign, and Mark smile widened.

When Gerry returned home that night, he collected his mail as normal, but stopped when he saw the bow. Beyond curious, he set his bag down and eased the ribbon away. The letters, he saw, were from the IRS and he panicked a moment before he opened the first one and saw that he held a check, for about five hundred dollars. There was a letter, too, one of those form letters couched in so much jargon as to be all but impossible to understand.

Flipping through the business-sized envelopes, he dropped the small card and had to retrieve it from the floor. Placing the letters back in the mailbox, he eased open the flap and pulled out a card with a picture of the Villain's Lair on the front. He smiled.

Inside, the Phantom's handwriting was still shaky and uneven, but Gerry could understand it: