Chicago Wildlife - 8. The Honest Interview

Chicago Wildlife

Chapter 6: The Honest Interview

“Are you ready to begin?”

“Yeah yeah, ready when you are, toots.”

“Please, for the remainder of the interview, refer to me as Ms. Pike.”

“Whatever you say, Pike.”

“Very good then. Let us begin. This is Turner Pike, interviewing Mr. Jacques Hein, for the Chicago Tribune. The current date is April first, 20XX. The current time is 4:00PM. Good afternoon, Mr. Hein.”

“How ya doin’, too-, ah, Ms. Pike?”

“Splendid, Mr. Hein. Thank you again for allowing this interview inside your office. I hope you are feeling well today?”

“Couldn’t be better! I got a private interview with a hot piece such as yourself. What more could a man want?”

“Um…I’m glad you feel that way. Let’s begin with a brief introduction of yourself. Your job-”

“So I was born and raised in this fair city of Chicago, around the time when disco was at its best. Shame, you know? Anyway, my mother was too poor to go to the hospital, so she wound up having to give birth to me on my bunk bed. The stain’s still there, I bet!”

“I wasn’t asking about your past-”

“And don’t even ask about my father! The deadbeat left before I was brought dragging and screaming into this world. We had it rough, my mother and I. We had to do some unsavory things just to scrape by. Why, by the time I was sixteen…”

“Please, Mr. Hein! I want to focus on your association with the various super-humans in this city.”

“Ohhhh, you wanna know some juicy tidbits about my friends, do ya?”

“Yes, Mr. Hein. It’s unheard of for someone without any powers such as yourself to be able to make so many connections with the superhero and supervillain community.”

“Ah, what can I say? I’m magnetic! Dames just drape themselves over me. Can’t say I blame them. I mean, look at this! Who wouldn’t want to be close to a fine specimen of a man like me?”

“It…it certainly is a mystery. Moving on, I hear that you’ve had a run in with a foreign assassin at some point?”

“Ugh, that freak? The bitch nearly broke my neck! Ooh, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you there.”

“That’s okay. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Can I?! I’ll tell you the whole story! See, I work with a lot of clients, some of them the sort of unsavory types that I can’t repeat here, you getting me? And one of them, well, let’s just say that they aren’t the kind of people who tend to think clearly when they get mad. Not that I gave them a reason to be mad at me to begin with. Their interpreter just misunderstood what I said. It’s not my fault that the dweeb decided to have a grudge against me. He probably was intimidated by my efficiency. Figured that I would rise above him in ranks within the organization. Take me out early, you getting me?”

“I see.”

“Anyway, he snitches to the head of the household about a certain ‘deal’ I did to a tee, only he says that I messed up by giving the prize to someone else. So the head of the household, completely duped over by this snitch, decides to send some broad from overseas to outfit me in some new cement shoes. The gal’s call name is supposedly ‘Monster Hunter.’ If you ask me, that sounds like the name of someone who’s trying too hard to sound tough. Anyway, I don’t know how she found me, but she somehow managed to track me down to the docks one night. There I was, taking a peaceful stroll along the waters, minding my own business, when this crazy bitch starts attacking me. Now, she’s supposed to be this world-class assassin, right? She had on her several guns, swords, knives, grenades, and a freaking axe!”

“She had all of those weapons on her? I find that hard to believe. The sheer weight of all those weapons alone…”

“Ha ha! Yeah, I bet you would think that. Between you and me, I don’t think she’s even human. More like an ogre, you getting me? She’s jacked up to shit, muscles bulging everywhere, puts my man Schwarzenegger to shame. Ah, and she tries to call ME a ‘monster.’ Ha! A dependable guy like me ain’t even close to some monstrous broad that goes around ironically calling herself a ‘Monster Hunter.’ You getting all this? ‘Cause it looks like you ain’t buying this for a second.”

“I’m recording everything, Mr. Hein. With the various superpowers on display in the city, having super strength isn’t so farfetched. Please continue with your account.”

“Yeah, so I was surprised by this chick in the middle of the night. She said my time was up, and drew a samurai sword. Now, I’m still here and in one piece, talking to you, so obviously I made it out alive. Let me tell you how I did it. So, she swings at me, but I dodge at the last second. Heh, I was a little nimbler back then. You should have seen me in my prime! Like a freaking ninja.”

“You don’t say, Mr. Hein. Please avoid using anymore exaggerations. The readers cannot always tell humor from fact just by reading.”

“What, you don’t think I’m hiding some serious moves behind this Adonis of a body? I’ll have to show you some of my packed-away pecs sometime. Haha! Anyway, I see a lead pipe lying on the ground and pick it up. She starts swinging again and I block the sword with my pipe. So then we both start swinging at each other. Clang! Pow! Just like in the movies. Finally, I smack the sword right out of her hands, and it goes flying! Whoosh! Right into the river.”

“So the sword might be recoverable, if it’s still sitting at the bottom of the riverbed? We might be able to lift some fingerprints off of it if it’s still there.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t know about any of that sciency stuff. Anyway, after that goes flying, she pulled out this high-powered rifle. Now, even I know that a pipe isn’t going to do me much good against a freaking gun, so I look around and see this discarded riot shield. Why was a riot shield left to rot at the docks? Who cares! I grab it and hold it up and she starts firing. Now, I didn’t want to chance it breaking after so many shots, so I think to myself, ‘Hey! How about charging at her and bash her skull in with the shield?’ And I think to myself, ‘Yeah, that does sound like a good idea! I’m glad I thought of it!’ So I do just that. Not the whole ‘bash her skull in with the shield’ thing, but rather just the ‘charging at her’ thing. I manage to knock her back a little and she dropped the rifle in her surprise. After that, it was a grapple to the finish.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean?! At close quarters, all an assassin can do is use their fists! That bitch grabbed me, and not in the way that I like, and tried to choke the shit out of me! Well actually, she tried to snap my neck, but hey, you think some poor soul hasn’t tried that on me before? I could see that move coming a mile away, so I did some maneuvering of my own and got her grabby hands safely away from my slender and porcelain neck. Haha!”

“And what happened after that?”

“I did some sweet karate moves and beat my so-called ‘killer’ back into submission!”

“You don’t have to make those karate gestures. The readers can’t see you doing them.”

“Ah, but you can, and can you blame me for wanting to impress such a woman as yourself? Eh?”

“Please continue with your account, Mr. Hein.”

“Sure thing, toots. Now, I kicked her scrawny little ass from here to Milwaukee and back. Course, along the way I accidentally got some bones broken. Must’ve hit her too hard! Haha! Anyway, with her out of the picture, I booked it so that I could call our efficient and not at all corrupt police to come arrest her. From what I’ve heard, she got away before they showed up, so she’s still at large.”

“It sounds like it was an eventful night.”

“Nah, just another typical night for good ole Jacques Hein, consultant to the supers!”

“I see. Thank you for your input, Mr. Hein. I’d like to talk next about someone our male readerships have requested for a long time now. The notoriously hard to get along with holy vigilante, Sister Catherine, aka Sisterly Bond?”

“Gah! Why can’t we ever talk about someone I actually like?!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hein. It’s a highly requested topic. We can’t disappoint our readers, especially when we have the chance to talk to someone who’s actually met and worked with Catherine before.”

“Eh heh, she wouldn’t like hearing you refer to her as just ‘Catherine,’ I can tell you that, toots. She’d probably say ‘Oh, I worked hard for the title of Sister! And my slutty superhero name is there for a reason!’ Haha, am I right, or am I right?”

“I…wouldn’t know, Mr. Hein. I never met Sister Catherine before.”

“And if you’re smart, you never will! That witch is bad news, you hear me? Every time I stick my neck out for her, I somehow end up footing the bill, not to mention putting myself at Death’s doorstep.”

“That’s very interesting to hear, Mr. Hein. Could you give us an example?”
“Can I?! Okay, so that loony Trump Card was making a racket. I happen to see it all go down, so I figure ‘Hey! Why not go tell the only mystical gal I know in town about this and get HER to do all the dirty work?’ Not a bad plan, if I do say so myself. Unfortunately, her office/orgy meet-up place is clear on the other side of town. I thought to myself, ‘Why should I waste all my gas driving all the way down there just to get one woman?’ But then I thought, ‘I’d rather be alive and out of gas money than dead and out of fucks to give.’ You know what I’m saying?”

“I-”

“So I make the drive down there and explain the whole thing to her. Heh heh, I’m actually glad that I did. I must’ve interrupted her ‘session’ with at least six different guys! Oh, don’t look so shocked, toots. You report-types do your homework, so you must’ve known what her other profession was. Anyway, little known fact: if it doesn’t have to do with kicking demon butt, her powers are useless. So since the act of actually getting to where Trump Card was doesn’t have to do with said demon butt, she can’t just fly there, so she begs me to drive her there, seeing as how she doesn’t have a car of her own and have you seen the highway at rush hour? Forget about it! I agree to driving her because I’m somewhat of a saint myself. Boy, that was a mistake. She kept whining on and on the whole time, and it was at least a 45 minute drive, even with all the shortcuts I had to take and speed limits I had to ignore. For the safety of the city, of course.”

“Of course, Mr. Hein. Do go on.”

“So we finally get there, ‘there’ being this big junkyard in the middle of nowhere, and crazy old Carde is just chanting spells like no one’s business. And you know Carde, if he’s saying something you don’t understand, then you’re about to be neck-deep in demons. So I tell her, ‘Hey, how’s about doing something about this? That’s why you’re here, ain’t it?’ And she’s like ‘Very well. Pish posh. I act so British so people will think I’m sophisticated.’ So she makes googly eyes at him and he totally falls for it! I turn to the side to bark up my lungs, and then suddenly I hear shooting. So I turn back around and there she is, firing her magic guns at a whole swarm of demons.”

“Where did the demons come from?”

“From Carde, of course! He just opened a few new assholes in the sky and the little turd nuggets came popping out like BB gun bullets. Anyway, she starts blasting them out of the sky, and when she got bored with that, just starts cleaving them with an axe.”

“An axe?”

“Yeah, don’t you know her super powers? Her little breast implants can do anything she wants them to. She wants an axe? She gets an axe! Her more creative uses have been courtesy of MY imaginative suggestions, by the way. So she’s running around, killing demons left and right, and I’m in the back, shouting orders and telling her where demons are coming from. Warning her when one tries to sneak up on her, that sort of thing, you know? So finally she gets rid of them all and corners poor old Carde. Man, you wouldn’t believe the kinds of things that come out of a president’s mouth! He blasts her, she blasts him, I want to make it home in time to cook my kids their dinner, and finally a big explosion happens and he goes down hard. I make a witty comment (I forget what it was at the moment. You’ll have to get back to me later about that) and try to usher Sisterly Bond back into the car because I’m kind of in a hurry, right? But then the freaking bastard gets back up again!”

“So she didn’t kill him.”

“Trust me, toots, she tried. That broad ain’t one of those ‘no-killing’ heroes you hear so much about. But, Trump Card did sell his soul to the devil for dark magic, so it’s actually a lot harder to put him down than you’d think. Anyway, he just makes some vague threats and disappears. You know how villains are. They get beat up, and they try to save face by making an idle threat they know they can’t deliver. So THEN we leave.”

“So she saved the entire city from being overrun by demons. I’d say that qualifies her as a hero.”

“Eh, she definitely gets some sort of sick pleasure out of it. Otherwise, I don’t think she would even do it.”

“If you say so, Mr. Hein. And at that, I’m afraid we’ve run out of time. Thank you again for participating in this interview and sharing your valuable insight. I believe we really shed some light on some of the lesser known figures in the local superhero community today.”

“Yeah, no problem toots, I mean, Ms. Pike. Always wanted a captive audience. It’s about time someone heard what I had to say! I tells ya, no respect these days. It ain’t easy being me, and I should know! I do that gig every day! Ha ha!”

“Ha, yes, I’m sure. This is Ms. Turner Pike, for the Chicago Tribune, stopping the recording now.”

“We good now, toots?”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Oh right, Turner. We off the air now?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“Great! You know, there’s plenty more of those titillating stories where that came from. Maybe you’d like a more in-depth interview over dinner? I know a great Italian place across the bridge…”

“I’ll have to decline, Mr. Hein. I’m scheduled for another interview later on, and a rendezvous with my ‘boyfriend.’ Thank you for the offer, though.”

“Bah…you’re missing out. Just give me a call when you change your mind.”

“If that happens, Mr. Hein. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must be going.”

“You know who to call for all the great scoops!”