The last time I saw my daughter, she was twenty-three years old and had just started graduate school.
Shalissa had been diagnosed with cancer the year before, and there had been several ups and downs in those twelve months. But then, out of nowhere, the cancer accelerated its campaign to take my wife’s life.
From the time Shalissa went to the hospital to the time she took her last breath, eight days passed. And in those eight days the city had been terrorized by a man who called himself Prometheus.
That wasn’t his real name, of course. His real name was Jeffrey Solomon Harris. He was a thirty-three-year-old retired veteran. He had been in charge of munitions during Desert Storm, and brought that knowledge back home where he quickly got divorced from the woman he had married before going on his first tour, couldn’t hold down a steady job, and was arrested twice for aggravated assault.
It isn’t clear when he eventually saw Temple as the cause for all his heartbreak and loss, but soon he found himself in Manhattan, hunting me. He knew the best way to catch my attention was to make an entrance, and so he had blown up a bus. Nobody had been on the bus at the time—it was in the middle of the night and the bus was parked in the depot—but he had written a note to the paper claiming the incident belonged to him and that next time he would blow up a bus with people on it if Temple didn’t face him. As he didn’t specify a place or time, it was nearly impossible for me to meet his demands, even if I wanted to.
Jeffrey Harris didn’t seem to care about this point. Two days later, a city bus driving up Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem exploded, killing eight people and wounding four others.
The city went into chaos.
Papers proclaimed that a terrorist was at work. TV and radio personalities questioned how Temple could let it get to this point. Hadn’t the bomber explained his intentions, told Temple what would happen if Temple ignored him?
Another letter was sent to the newspaper, this time signed Prometheus.
The bomber had given himself a name.
My father once told me that whenever there’s a hero, a villain will step up to challenge him.
Just like my father, I had only dealt with bank robbers, killers, arsonists, mobsters, and gangsters. Basically, anybody committing a crime that the police could not take care of on their own. Only one time before had a villain specifically challenged Temple, and that was the Reaper, one year after my father had managed to escape the mansion outside Philadelphia.
The Reaper had been sent to New York to hunt my father. My father had almost died because of it. But it was also because of the Reaper that my father met my mother, and that I was born.
But during my father’s time as Temple, there were some in the world that viewed him as the enemy. Either he was something inhuman or he was a vigilante who needed to be apprehended by the police and brought to justice. This was, at first, a small group of people, but as the years passed and more pundits began to voice their say, the more public opinion began to shift. For the most part, the world viewed Temple as a hero. They understood that he was there to help, even though they may not have understood why he was there to help. But still there were those who didn’t fully trust Temple. They questioned his motives. They wanted to know what he gained from doing everything he did for the city. Or, even more, why did he stay in the city? Why didn’t he branch out into other cities? Other countries? Why was he being selfish?
The next thing Prometheus blew up was a subway car. He had timed it just right, as the cars were heading over the East River into Queens. Directly in the middle of the bridge, the two end cars.
Twenty-seven people died that day.
The front page of the New York Post the next day asked IS TEMPLE SCARED OF PROMETHEUS?
No, Temple wasn’t scared of Prometheus. It was just that his focus was on his wife who lay dying in a hospital bed.
I took time off work to be with her. My captain and lieutenant understood. Besides, I had built up quite a bit of sick time over the years so that I could probably have taken the entire month off. Besides, I was a homicide detective. The people Prometheus had murdered had been killed, yes, but those scenes had called for different kinds of investigators. My information on the man was limited. And besides, my wife was dying.
My son wanted to go after Prometheus. He had already been training for three years. He was excited to take over for me, when the time came. But I kept putting it off. I didn’t want him to take on the responsibility. Because once you took on the responsibility, it was nearly impossible to let go. Every day that went by, you wondered what would happen next. You worried about all the lives you might not save. You worried what might have happened had you focused more of your attention on one side of the city while the other side fell to ruin.
We took turns staying by my wife’s bedside. We took shifts. We got little sleep. And meanwhile, the city was in chaos, trapped in fear of a man who wanted nothing more than to face Temple, to kill him.
My son wanted me to go after Prometheus.
My daughter wanted me to save her mother’s life.
Couldn’t I somehow transfer my blood to her? she asked. Couldn’t whatever helps heal me help defeat the cancer?
It was a good question. Something I had wondered from the very first day we learned she had cancer. The problem was there were just too many unknowns.
Then, two days later, Prometheus took things to a whole new level.
He detonated a ten-pound brick of C-4 at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. The bomb had been located right near the front of the stage, and all 1,872 seats were filled to capacity during the fourth act of Romeo & Juliet when it exploded. Most of the cast was killed, as were several of the audience. Seventy-six people dead, one hundred fifteen injured.
It was that same evening my wife passed away. Now nothing held me back. I was angry with Prometheus, yes, but the loss of my wife made me livid. I felt a rage I had never felt before.
That evening Temple tracked down Jeffrey Solomon Harris. Harris could have been brought to justice easily enough—taken to the police, had his case heard before a jury of his peers—but that rage was still bubbling inside Temple.
Temple snapped Jeffrey’s neck, then set up a bomb to explode five minutes later. Prometheus had been hiding out in an abandoned house in Greenpoint. As far as the rest of the world would be concerned, Prometheus had accidentally killed himself by one of his own explosives.
It was also that night I realized I could no longer be Temple. I needed to give it up. I needed to leave. But not before I finished an old score.
I faced off against Roman Vyhovsky. I beat up most of his men, tied Roman up, and took over two million dollars from his safe.
My wife’s time in and out the hospital over the last year had drained most of our savings. Insurance had only covered so much. Her funeral needed to be paid. I made sure there was enough money to cover all of it, as well as something extra for my son and daughter, and I kept a little for myself because I knew I would be leaving and never coming back. The rest—well over one and a half million dollars—I dropped down into the middle of Times Squares.
As Roger had said, that day money literally rained from the sky.
The next day I resigned from the force. I gave my son my blessing to continue on as Temple. I didn’t say goodbye to Aisha, though. Even now I’m not sure why. Maybe because I knew she would convince me to stay. Maybe because I would be reminded of just what I was giving up.
I couldn’t let that happen, so I left.
Now, twenty years later, I didn’t tell any of this to Sanchez or Agent Njeim or even the man currently driving the SUV. It was midday, and despite the governor’s state of emergency, there were a few vehicles out on the street, more people with cross country skis out and about, kids throwing snowballs at each other. Another SUV trailed us, just like before, as we headed toward the Upper West Side and turned down my daughter’s street and then, seconds later, pulled up in front of her brownstone.
I told them to stay in the SUV. I stepped out, looked up and down the street, and strode up the sidewalk and the steps leading to the front door. I rang the doorbell and waited, rang the bell again after several seconds passed, and I imagined my daughter dead inside, that the surveillance assigned to keep watch over her was also dead, killed by the group that wanted to kill me. But then there was noise behind the door, the soft shuffling of footsteps. Silence for a moment as the person on the other side peeked through the peephole. More silence as the person no doubt hesitated, deciding whether or not to open the door.
The door opened.
Aisha stood there, beautiful as ever, though her eyes were hard as they glared at me.
We stared at each other for a long moment.
Then she stepped forward and slapped me across the face.