Hulk."
"So what?" I said.
"I've fought the Hulk. The Hulk's personality being what it is, pretty much everybody has fought the Hulk."
Felicia leaned over and peered at my face.
"What you doing?" I asked her.
"Seeing if your eyes have turned green." She smiled at me. "The Rhino's had a lot of work with various villains, and has a reputation as an extremely tenacious mercenary. As long as no one sends him after the Hulk, apparently."
"Or me," I said.
She patted my hand. "Or you."
I scowled at her. "Why are you giving me a hard time about this?"
She shrugged. "Maybe it's my background. As mercenaries go, the Rhino isn't all that bad a guy."
"Not all that bad? He wrecks things left and right! Factories, buildings, vehicles—"
"And," Felicia said, "in the midst of all that destruction, he's never actually killed anyone. That says something about him, Pete."
"Even if he hasn't killed anyone, he's still breaking the law. He destroys property, steals money and valuables, and in general makes a profit off of his victims' losses."
Felicia removed her glasses and stared hard at me for a second. Then she said, her voice very quiet, "The way I used to do."
I frowned at that, and fell silent.
"I know you've got a lot of contempt for him," she said in that same quiet voice. "But I've been where he's standing—and I got into it purely for the profit, not to take care of my family, the way he did. He started off with better intentions than I ever had, and he's ended up in a much worse position. It's a bad place to be, Peter. I feel sorry for him."
"I don't," I said quietly.
"And what's the difference, Pete?" she asked. There was no malice in the question. "What's the difference between him and me? What's the difference between him and you, for that matter? I mean, I don't know if anyone ever explained this, but vigilantism isn't exactly smiled upon by the law in this town, and you do it every day."
Which was true, and really inconvenient to this debate. "So what? You think I should drop the mask, go to the police academy, and get a badge? Right. Like they'd ever let me do that."
She shook her head. "I just think you should think of him as a human being, not some kind of dangerous wild animal. Speaking of which," she said, "didn't it ever strike you as odd that the Ancients hired the bloody
Rhino?
A goon chock-full of totemic life energy?"
I blinked.
It hadn't.
"I'm not saying you should pull your punches," she continued. "I'm not saying we should give him a hug and sign him up for group therapy. I'm just saying that he's a human being with strengths and flaws, just like anyone else—and that he's in way over his head. He's in as much danger as you are and he probably doesn't even realize it."
I shut the book a little harder than was strictly necessary. "He hurts people for money."
"You hurt people for free!"
she said tartly. "That just means he has better business sense than you."
"I fight criminals," I said. "Not bank guards and security personnel."
"One man's security guard is another man's hired thug," she said. "And when you get right down to it, men like the Rhino spend far more time pounding on other criminals than they do on law enforcement."
I stacked the books up to return to the shelves. Most people probably don't make enormous booming noises when stacking books. But I think they would if they had the proportionate strength of a spider and the proportionate patience of the crowd control guys on Jerry Springer. "So what are you saying? There's no difference between the good guy and the bad guy?"
Felicia arched an eyebrow at me. "They're both guys. Aren't they?"
"Yeah. One of them a violent criminal, and the other someone who protects people from violent criminals."
"My point, Peter," she said, "is that when you get down to it, there's very little difference between a wolf in the fold and the sheepdog who protects them."
"Like hell there isn't," I said. "The sheepdog doesn't eat sheep.
Which is a really sorry metaphor to use for New Yorkers in the first place. Your average New Yorker is about as sheeplike as a Cape buffalo."
"Not everyone has a heart like yours, Parker," she snarled, her voice ringing out among the stacks. "Not everyone is as good as you. As noble. Not everyone sees the difference between right and wrong—and once upon a time you didn't, either, or you wouldn't be who you are." She folded her arms and brought her voice under control with some difficulty. 'And I'd still be doing jobs on jewelers and vaults and…"—she gestured around us, wearily— "libraries."
True enough. Once upon a time, I hadn't seen the difference between right and wrong, and Uncle Ben died for it.
I sighed. "Look, there's nothing else to be gained here. You want to go?"
She nodded. "Yeah. Another library?"
"No," I said. "I have another stop to make."
Chapter 12
Coach Kyle had been right. It wasn't a great neighborhood.
The Larkins' apartment building was well coated with graffiti and neglect. There wasn't a visible streetlight that hadn't been broken. The windows on the lower floors were all barred and covered in boards. There weren't a lot of cars around, and the ones that were looked far too expensive for anyone living there—except for one old Oldsmobile, which had been put on blocks and stripped to a skeleton of its former self.
Most tellingly, on a Saturday afternoon, there was almost no one in sight. I saw one gray-haired woman walking down the street with a hard expression and a purposeful stride. Several young men in gang colors sat on or around one of the expensive cars while a big radio boomed. Other than that, nothing. No pedestrians headed for a corner grocery store. No one taking out the trash or walk-ing to the mailbox. No children out playing in the pleasant weather.
I'd filled Felicia in on Samuel, and she had listened to the whole thing without comment until we got where we were going. "You take me to the nicest places," she said. "Which building?"
"The one with those friendly-looking young men with the radio."
"I thought you'd say that," Felicia said.
We approached the building and got flat-eyed stares from the young men. They sat with the grips of handguns poking up out of their waistbands or outlined against their loose shirts. None of them were older than nineteen. One couldn't have been fifteen.
"Hey," said one of the larger young men, his tone belligerent. "White bread. Where you think you're going?"
I gestured with a hand without slowing down, as if it had been a polite inquiry instead of a challenge. "Visiting a friend."
The kid came to his feet with an aggressive little bounce and planted himself directly in my way. "I don't know you. Maybe you better just turn around." He looked past me to Felicia. "You're pretty stupid, coming down here with a piece like that. Where do you think you are, man?"
I stopped and looked around, then scratched my head. "Isn't this Sesame Street? I'm sure Mister Snuffalupagus is around here somewhere."
The kid in front of me got mad and got right in my face, eye to eye. The young men with him let out an ugly, growling sound as a whole. "You trying to start something, man? You gonna get a cap, you keep this up."
It was annoying. If I'd been wearing the mask, I could have taken these kids' guns away and scared them off. Peter Parker, part-time science teacher, however, couldn't beat up gangs single-handed. And if anything started, Felicia was sure to pitch in. She could handle herself as well as anyone I knew, but this wasn't the time or the place to look for a fight.
I lifted my hands and said, "Sorry, man, just joking with you. I'm here to see Samuel Larkin."
"What do you care?"
"I'm his basketball coach," I said.
That drew a round of quiet laughs. "Sure you are." He shook his head. "Time you're leaving."