"You okay, pal?"
A policeman was approaching, pointing a flashlight directly at him. "I think so," he answered hoarsely.
"Looks like you took a spill."
"I hit my head while swimming to shore." He wasn’t sure why he was lying, why he wasn’t telling the policeman that he didn’t know who he was or how he’d gotten there… but the lies came easily enough.
The policeman stopped a few feet away him, trailing the flashlight up and down the man’s body. "I don’t think so, pal."
"What makes you say that?"
"Your clothes ain’t wet."
He looked down, cursing himself for not having noticed something so obvious. He slipped the medallion into his pocket and forced a smile. "Would you believe I’ve been on the beach long enough to have dried out?"
"How about you tell me your name?"
After pausing for a brief second, he uttered another lie and by doing so he unknowingly set himself down a dangerous path. "My name’s Lazarus Gray."
The officer’s eyes narrowed and he quickly threw a punch at the man who was now calling himself Lazarus. To his own surprise, Lazarus moved aside with practiced ease and threw up his hand to catch the policeman under the chin with a karate chop. He then gripped the man by the shoulder and pulled him close, driving a knee into the officer’s stomach. He finished him off with a backhand that sent one of the man’s teeth flying from his mouth.
Lazarus stood over the fallen man and realized that he wasn’t panting at all. He had reacted automatically, fluidly calling upon skills he hadn’t even known he’d possessed. He knelt down and searched the officer’s pockets, finding a black leather wallet that contained three dollars in cash, a driver’s license in the name of Arthur Redwood and a small photograph of a handsome man with gray-tinged hair, dressed in a tuxedo. Lazarus knew that this was a photo of himself, even though he couldn’t recall ever having seen his own face. He pocketed the photograph and stood up, having come to the conclusion that this man was not a police officer at all. Up close, his badge looked fake and there was nothing in his wallet to verify his position with law enforcement. Though he couldn’t recall how he would have known this, Lazarus also recognized that the gun in the man’s holster was not regulation issue.
Lazarus looked back toward the city and made his decision. He had to get away from here. Answers would come later but for now he had to keep moving. This man had intended to harm him, possibly even kill him. He couldn’t take the chance that this man was operating on his own: in fact, something told him that wasn’t the case at all. Lazarus stripped the man of his weapon, pushing the barrel of the gun into the front of his slacks. He pulled the tails of his button-down shirt out of his pants and let them hang, obscuring anyone’s view of the gun.
Moving with the grace of a jungle cat, Lazarus Gray began to move through the shadows, heading into the bright lights and squalid streets of Sovereign City.
Chapter II
A Hero For Hire
Robeson Avenue had become one of the more famous streets in Sovereign City. The transformation from an unassuming, mostly abandoned locale to one where gossip columnists routinely camped out was the direct result of Lazarus Gray choosing it for his home base. In the months since he had awoken on the beach, he had slowly built a reputation as a man with skills that could prove useful to those in need. He had parlayed incredible knowledge about the workings of the stock market, taking the small amounts of money he earned and transforming it into enough capital to open his own business. Dubbed Assistance Unlimited, this business existed for the sole purpose of helping those in need. Gray charged nothing up front for his services, preferring to be paid when the job was complete. He asked only what the client could afford and not a penny more. With the city reeling under the twin terrors of a stagnant economy and rampant corruption, the papers had seized upon Lazarus Gray as a figure of great interest and one capable of inspiring hope.
Gray had purchased all three of the buildings that lay on Robeson Avenue. The heart of his complex was a three-story structure that had once been a hotel. Gray’s three associates used the first floor, while the second had been gutted and converted into one large room that was used for meetings, briefings and research. The third floor was off-limits to everyone but Gray himself and was his private domicile.
Across the street were several storefronts, all of which had closed down at the dawn of the Great Depression. Lazarus had purchased these, ensuring that no one would operate any businesses next to his own set of offices. He had continued to use the name Lazarus Gray for two reasons: the first was that he had no other name to use and the second was that he hoped it would draw out those who might know the truth about him. So far, it had failed to accomplish the latter.
Lazarus Gray had found a measure of peace in helping others, even though his own past was lost to him. Though he was notoriously tight-lipped and rarely showed strong emotion, his aides had come to love him. All of them had come into his employ after themselves being helped by Gray.
Morgan Watts was forty-two years old and pencil-thin. He favored black suits and fedora hats and not even his closest friends had ever seen him without a necktie. He kept his dark hair slicked back and his moustache waxed. Morgan was Gray’s liaison with the underworld for he himself had once been a part of the city’s mafia. Though he was nominally a free man now, the tentacles of organized crime ran deep and a part of him would always be loyal to his old ‘Family.’ Those ties paled beside only one thing: his allegiance to Lazarus Gray, who had helped him out of a tight jam that could have cost him his life.
Samantha Grace was the only female in Gray’s employ. A stunning blonde whose parents were wealthy philanthropists, Samantha had grown up with every opportunity possible. She could speak five languages fluently, was a champion swimmer and was a veritable encyclopedia on topics as varied as fashion, European history and the socio-political climate of the Orient. Samantha had come into Gray’s employ after her father had fallen prey to a blackmail scheme. Lazarus had managed to apprehend the criminal behind the plot, managing to destroy the photographs that could have compromised her family’s good name. Admiration for the work that Lazarus performed had led the twenty-year-old into seeking a position with Assistance Unlimited.
The final member of Assistance Unlimited was a Korean named Eun Jiwon. After moving to America with his parents over a decade before, Eun had found his family’s fortunes in disarray. His father had opened a small grocery store but when local crooks began to demand protection money, Eun started a covert series of attacks on the criminals. He had been mildly successful for a time, vandalizing their operations and becoming a general nuisance, before they’d finally figured out who was behind it all. Eun’s family store had been burned to the ground and his parents murdered. The young man would have thrown away his own life in a vain attempt at revenge had Lazarus Gray not intervened, helping him channel his aggression into a healthier direction. Eun was in his mid-twenties and extremely handsome, though his angry demeanor kept almost everyone at arm’s length from him.
As intriguing as those three were, the real attraction at Assistance Unlimited was Lazarus Gray himself. Dressed in gray slacks and a matching shirt that was somewhat reminiscent of a hospital orderly’s uniform, the strangely detached man kept a close eye on everything that went on in the city. Those in authority at City Hall alternately feared or welcomed him, depending on how corrupt they had become.