Tales of the Red Panda: The Crime Cabal (5 page)

It was all that Kit Baxter could do to keep from whooping for pure joy
as she raced through the blackness towards a speck of light in the distance.
Feet first she blazed forward, riding a cushion of air as she streaked over the
smooth walls of the tube at great speed toward a hidden lair, far below a
fashionable district of the city.

The first time she had ridden one of these man-sized pneumatic tubes,
the Red Panda had left the emergency service lights on for her. They bathed the
tube with an eerie blue glow through its clear walls, and certainly demystified
the process. But she didn’t want the Boss to treat her like a baby, and
insisted ever after on riding with the lights off. Besides, the sight of the
earth and rocks beyond the narrow confines of the transport was actually a
little more claustrophobic than racing through the pitch darkness, though she’d
have never told
him
that.

She felt the pressure of compressed air flowing up to meet her, to slow
her descent. She pointed her toes to eliminate the drag and keep as much of her
speed as she could for a few more seconds, which he had expressly told her not
to do. The tide of air rolled up her legs and buffeted against her face for a
moment until she finally flexed her feet and accepted the deceleration. Seconds
later, she slowed to a crawl, just at the very moment that her feet reached the
waiting bottom of the tube.

She smiled as the tube opened with a hiss. Kit was born fearless, but
if anyone else in the world had tried to tell her that a giant pneumatic tube
was a perfectly safe way to travel…

“Anybody but him,”
she smiled to herself, with a sudden skip at
the thought.

She caught herself just as suddenly and composed herself slightly. She
straightened the jacket of her chauffeur’s uniform and stepped forward at an even
clip.

“Behave yourself,”
she reminded herself by rote.

Kit walked away from the tube marked “Mansion” she had just exited, and
past a half dozen more, each bearing a sign that indicated its destination:
Hangar, Boat Launch, Downtown and so on. She walked out into the hall. There
was a light under the door in the Crime Lab, which was slightly ajar. Kit bit
her lip a little. Should she change into her Squirrel Suit before joining him?
She changed her mind twice before smiling and stepping forward to the open
door. She wanted to show him the papers.

She slid through the Crime Lab door as quiet as a mouse. He was seated
at the large worktable at the end of the room, his back turned toward her. She
grinned and crept forward silently. She could see from the strap around the
back of his head that he was wearing his magnifying goggles as he bent over
some intricate piece of work. Her eyes scanned the workbench near him, and sure
enough, the bright red domino mask lay within easy reach. Even here, in their
sanctuary, he was seldom without it.

It was strange. Even after all these months of dual identity, she
always thought of herself as Kit Baxter. And he used both of her names
interchangeably, as they seemed appropriate. But when she thought of him, which
was often, it was always as the Red Panda, and usually with the mask, as fond
as she was of the face that it hid. She could never be sure what he was really
thinking, but it seemed to her that even in his own mind he had become the Red
Panda completely, and the man he had been born was now little more than a mask.

Perhaps it was just a matter of having been at the game longer. Or
perhaps every hero dealt with duality in different ways. But Kit believed that
in his heart her Boss felt as much contempt for the spoiled, arrogant rich boy
that he was supposed to be as she had displayed at their first meeting. She
smiled again at the memory.

Kit had only taken the job as his driver because she suspected his
secret. Before long, she was certain she was right, that August Fenwick truly
was the figure of mystery who risked his life to protect those in the city who
most desperately needed a champion. For weeks, perhaps months, she had played
the game, pretending to believe the paper-thin excuses he always gave for
having her drive the limousine to the most unlikely neighborhoods. She accepted
his strange behavior with nothing more than a, “Yes, Boss,” and turned a blind
eye to his occasional mysterious injuries. As much as she had wished she could
do more to help in his crusade, she feared her open assistance would be
unwelcome. That he would send her away rather than risk her life. Or worse, use
the hypnotic power the Red Panda was reputed to have to erase her memory. She
had hated the thought of that, and had assisted him as best she could while
playing dumb.

At last the day had come when she could pretend no longer. When the
only way to save his life was to crash the limousine through a warehouse wall,
running over the goons that had him tied to a chair in the process, and cold-clocking
the gang leader with a right cross to the nose, just like her old man had
taught her.

She hadn’t said a word after she’d freed him. Just stood there with her
chin out, daring him to object. They had stood like that, wordless, for nearly
a minute. In the end, all he’d said was, “We should go.” For a week, neither
said a word about it, each of them waiting for the other shoe to drop. She
still didn’t understand why he hadn’t fixed her little red wagon when it would
have been so much easier for him to do so. She liked to think it was the punch.

In the end, it had been him who blinked first. He finally asked her
what she wanted to keep quiet, as if he expected her to name an amount. He
didn’t expect her to ask for a mask of her own, and the right to fight at his
side. He had protested, of course.

“I would think it would be easier to share a secret with someone if
they had a secret too,” she had said coyly.

“Are you blackmailing me?” he said, suddenly grave.

“If that makes it more exciting for you,” she chirped, her heart in her
mouth. It was at that moment that Kit Baxter learned that there was one single
way that she could catch the Red Panda off guard and leave him momentarily
flat-footed. He knew a dozen martial arts, but flirting wasn’t one of them.

“Kit Baxter, behave yourself,” he stammered after a moment, and said no
more on the subject.

The next day she had opened the door to the car and found a cowl on the
front seat. It was plain black and unadorned by ears – the codename came
later, with the gliding membranes he’d designed for her – but it had
thrilled her at once. Beneath the cowl was an envelope with directions to the
secret entrance to the pneumatic tube she had just exited. And so had begun the
long hours of training, the thrill of the danger, the pride in making a real
difference to people who needed her help desperately. The first step on a
journey of adventure that few young women would have welcomed, but for Kit
Baxter, it was a dream come true.

The learning curve is always steep for a sidekick, but even the Red
Panda had to admit she was a natural. Crime detection and theory,
safe-cracking, lock-picking, code-breaking, she ate it up and asked for more.
Stealth, acrobatics and every combat style he had spent years perfecting
– he had never seen her discouraged by failure, and had never seen her
fail at something twice. And if he had the slightest notion that she might have
had more than one reason for working so hard to earn a role in his life larger
than chauffeur, he had never betrayed a sign of it.

“Ah, well,” she thought, her mind returning to the task at hand as she
crept up behind him in the Crime Lab, “where there’s life, there’s hope.”

He was completely engrossed in his work. He could have no idea she was
even here.

“The question you should ask yourself is,” he said suddenly, nearly
making her jump out of her skin, “did I hear your footsteps, the newspaper or
can I actually hear that impish grin spread over your face?”

He turned around in his chair to face her, wearing a smug little smile,
but neglecting to remove the magnifying goggles, which made his eyes look
gigantic, like a cartoon owl. She burst out laughing in spite of herself. His
face fell, just a little, and he turned back to the table.

“Sorry, Boss,” she said, biting her lip. “I brought the papers.”

“Oh yes?” he said, removing the goggles at last, but not yet looking
back. He seemed to be putting the finishing touches on some new gizmo. Kit
never did appreciate competition from inanimate objects.

“There are pictures,” she said, sliding up behind him and placing the
morning
Chronicle
before him on the
worktable. Instantly, she thought this might be overplaying things just a
little. She felt herself getting flustered at the sudden proximity, but she was
never one to call her own bluff.

“This is Big Joe Tennutti being hauled away on a stretcher. He slept
like a baby for five hours. Almost missed his own bail hearing.”

“I’ll bet he wishes he had,” the Red Panda smiled.

She could see the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stand up as she
breathed. Her pulse was running a quick foxtrot. She turned the page.

“Here’s Chief O’Mally refusing to confirm that we signed our work.” She
pressed on, feeling a little hot under the collar. “Looks happy, don’t he?”

“He always looks a little like that.” His eyes stubbornly refused to
wander.

“And here’s a photo of our autographed ledger on the next page. O’Mally
must be going out of his mind wondering how Jack Peters got that picture.”

“I sent it to him before we planted the ledger in Tennutti’s car,” he
said with a smile playing around the edges of his mouth.

“You what?” she cried in amazement.

“I thought you might get a kick out of that.” He grinned. “And I don’t
mind the occasional curtain call, when we’ve been particularly clever.”

“And the chance to really bother O’Mally?”

He turned to her and met her eyes, just inches away. “Never even
crossed my mind,” he said with mock sincerity. He smiled, “Is there more?”

“More what?” she half-murmured.

His brows knitted, genuinely puzzled. Kit felt her cheeks flush. She
turned back to the papers.

“There’s a nice little photo essay on page sixteen of the raid at the
High-Hat Club. Apparently when they heard Big Joe’d been pinched, most of his
soldiers took it on the lam. The cops didn’t have too much of a fight on their
hands. They cleaned the last rats outta the nest and boarded the place up. The
head of the Public Decency Committee says we should get a medal.”

“Just one?”

“Maybe they figure we can share.” Her cheeks felt like they were their
normal color again, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Speaking of shiny things, I made you something,” he said, turning back
to the workbench.

“You did? An’ here we are out of elbow macaroni and glue.”

He turned back to her, with a look of triumph on his face, and a small
rectangular membrane teeming with wires and microcircuits in his hand.

She blinked at him twice.

“Ta-dah?” she said at last, a little weakly.

“You don’t like it?” He seemed surprised.

“Well, it ain’t flowers an’ candy, but these days a girl can’t be too
choosy. Maybe if you gave me the first idea what it was…”

“Hmm? Oh, yes of course,” he said, leaning forward with excitement.
“You know, of course, how I use low-level mental projection to convince our
opponents that they see me in one place, when I’m really somewhere quite
different?”

“An’ then they shoot at nothing, you laugh and they start whimpering?
Yeah, that’s one of my favorites,” she said with a smirk.

“Well, it occurred to me you could use something similar of your own.”

Her eyes popped open wide. “You’re gonna teach me hypnosis?” she said
excitedly.

“Er… no,” he said, shifting a little in discomfort. “It’s fun to
do
, but not to
learn
. You wouldn’t like it. There’s a lot of meditating.”

“I don’t know what that is,” she said with her chin out and her brows knit.

“It means sitting very still and very quiet.”

“I can do that,” she protested.

“For a few days at a time.”

“Oh.”

“It’s just not on the list of things I can picture you doing,” he said
gently.

An evil smile crept across her face. “You mean there’s a
list
of things you can picture me
doing?”

He cleared his throat, just a little. She showed no mercy.

“Where is this list and when can we start checking things off?”

“Kit Baxter–!”

“Yes, Boss,” she said triumphantly, not waiting for him to finish. “So
what’s this whatsit and why is it better than hypnosis?”

“This,” he said, returning to the device, “is a Ventrilloquator.”

“I never heard of those,” she said skeptically.

“That’s because this is the only one there is. I thought up the name
just now.” Suddenly he was excited again. “Remember the sensors built into our
gloves that detect certain preset patterns of muscular flexing in our hands in
order to remotely control the push and pull of our Static Shoes?”