Not that there was any room for doubt. The body had been found in a Jokertown alley, wearing Tom's clothes and carrying all of Tom's ID, and Dr. Tachyon himself had done the autopsy and signed the death certificate, after comparing dental records.
Joey DiAngelis sighed, crushed another beer can in his hand, and tossed it to the side. He remembered when he and Tom had built the first shell together. Back then they made beer cans out of steel, and you had to be strong to crush the motherfuckers. Now any old wimp could do it.
He grabbed the rest of his six-pack by an empty ring in the plastic holder and walked on back to the bunker.
The big door was open, and down inside the hole Joey saw the flare of an acetylene torch. He sat down with his legs over the edge and dangled the six-pack out in front of him. "Hey, Tuds," he shouted down, "you ready for a break?"
The blowtorch went out. Tom walked out from behind the framework of the huge new half-built shell. What a fucking monster, Joey thought again as he looked down at its skeleton; it was going to be almost twice as big as any previous shell, airtight, watertight, self-contained, computerized, armored to hell and gone, a hundred and fifty fucking thousand dollars' worth of shell, all the suitcase loot and most of the insurance settlement, too. Tuds was even making noises about cannibalizing that fucking head he'd brought back to see if he could figure out some way to fix the radar set and hook it into his hardware.
Tom pulled off his goggles. They left big pale circles around his eyes. "Asshole," he shouted up, "how many times I got to tell you, Tudbury is dead. There's no one home but us turtles."
"Fuck it then," Joey said. "Turtles don't drink beer."
"This one does. Give it here-that goddamn torch is hot." Joey dropped what was left of the six-pack.
Tom caught it, tore off a can, and opened it. Beer sprayed all over his face and hair. Joey laughed.