"I didn"t realize your agency would be sending a woman," he says.
I let him think there"s an agency. "Is that a problem?"
"Well, uh, it"s just that my nemesis is Civetman."
"And?"
"Civetman."
"Look, you hired a superhero surrogate. You know how this works, right?"
"Yes. No. I mean, I was thinking you"d be more of a stand-in. Like an actor. Civetman is taller, and he has these huge muscles, and-"
"I don"t need huge muscles to listen to your monologue."
"But if it"s not a convincing scenario, how will I know it"s completely out of my system?"
"Okay." I hitch my bag up higher on my shoulder. "I can do captured girlfriend. Will that work for you?"
"Huh. Yeah. Yeah, okay, let"s do that."
"Fine. It"ll be an extra ten thousand."
"You"re kidding? Why?"
a.s.shole tax. "Ten grand extra for captured girlfriend, or I walk away with your deposit. Or you can dial down your Civetman obsession and let me do my job."
"I"m not paying extra, but since you"re already here how about you use the time you were supposed to be listening to my monologue doing something useful. You could clean my bathroom."
I take the detonator out of my pocket. He looks surprised. What kind of idiot is surprised to see a detonator in this situation? "Or I could blow up your bathroom and every other room in your alternate secret lair in Fiji. You just finished a big remodel, right? Laser targeting systems, Viking range in the kitchen, malachite bathtub with gold taps?" Seriously, gold taps. Tacky as h.e.l.l.
"You wouldn"t. I"d sue you for damages."
He"d sue me. Some supervillain. " "Clause 27.1.5: The Supplier retains the right to destroy as needed in either self-defense or in execution of the services noted herein any property of the Client"s owned for the purposes of committing villainy, super-or otherwise." "
"The lair-house-in Fiji is a vacation home."
"With six-megawatt lasers."
"Home security."
"Nice try." I raise the detonator. "So, what"s it gonna be?"
I leave ten grand further ahead and thinking I should have made it twenty. The Puzzler"s monologue was predictable, his plan for global domination was doomed to failure, and his weapons were the kind of junk you can get from the back room of an Army Surplus store if you know who to ask.
It"s some consolation to know I won"t have to worry about his repeat business, and at least I have some punching to look forward to this afternoon.
I"m on my way to Master Adisa"s studio and about a hundred yards from the subway when a ma.s.sive steel tentacle bursts the pavement in front of me. Another tentacle wraps itself around my waist and lifts me twenty feet into the air. A dozen squad cars come tearing around the corner. A guy with a bullhorn says, "Let the hostage go, Squidinator!"
I don"t have time for this- I have a private lesson today and I"m sure as h.e.l.l not letting some big dumb stunt blow my chance to learn the Pincer of Death.
I"ve still got my shoulder bag, so I squirm around in the grip of the tentacle to reach inside. The squirming probably looks good for the crowd. I hope a publicity-minded villain like the Squidinator appreciates it.
"Hey!" I shout, thrusting my business card toward the skinny guy in the giant mecha harness. "Do you mind?"
He lifts me right up to the harness and squints at the card.
"Oh, s.h.i.t. I"m really sorry. I didn"t realize. My friend DoomDaddy saw you last month. He said you were great, really helped him cut back on his monologuing."
"Glad to hear it. So you gonna put me down now, or what?"
"Um, I"m sort of in the middle of a thing here . . ."
"Here"s a thought- I can manage a little hysterical screaming, but I"ve got an appointment in twenty minutes so I"m gonna need you to drop me off at Concord and 87th."
"Concord and 87th?" he frowns. "That"s, like, all the way across town . . ."
"Weren"t you planning a rampage?"
"Yeah, but . . ."
"So rampage toward Concord and 87th."
"Okay, but that screaming is going to have to be really good."
"How"s this?" I say, and let him have it.
"Nice shriek," the Squidinator says. "Sounds really panicked."
"Thanks. I"m just imagining what"ll happen if I"m late for my appointment."
"Ah, yes, the Method," he says, missing the point. Scratch a supervillain and half the time there"s a failed actor underneath.
Since he seems so pleased with the performance I consider asking him to throw in one of the bags of cash he"s obviously pulled out of the smashed-up bank around the corner, but the dye packs have already gone off, bloodlike red dripping from a couple of tentacles. It"s a nice effect. Sure it makes the bank robbery pointless from an income perspective, but the Squidinator will score some priceless publicity.
I let loose another round of dramatic screams while the Squidinator hitches up his tentacles and lumbers uptown.
It"s only when I"m back home that I discover just how much publicity the Squidinator"s stunt got him after he dropped me off.
Arachn.o.boy finally turned up, late to the scene as usual. I"m pretty sure what happened was an accident, given the expression on the Squidinator"s face afterward. In the news footage it looks like his tentacles were just flailing wildly when one of them clipped a bit of Arachn.o.boy"s web and slung him headfirst into a building. Not much control, but a h.e.l.l of a lot of velocity.
The tabloid headlines were right- there was only one way to describe it. Arachn.o.boy got squashed.
The Squidinator went into hiding. I don"t know whether he was relieved or disappointed when he got pushed out of the news cycle only a day later by the explosion in front of Order Corps HQ. He might have held his own if there were no casualties, but the explosion took out the Blue Streak and both Marvel Twins.
A masked duo calling themselves Mistress Mine and the Malignant Mole released a video claiming credit. I didn"t recognize the Malignant Mole, but I knew Mistress Mine when she called herself the Scarlet Woman. We only had a few sessions together, mostly working on her discomfort with direct confrontation. When she stopped booking appointments and dropped off the scene I thought she decided I wasn"t helping and gave up supervillainy. I"m glad to see she"s still in the game. I wouldn"t have gone with the duo approach, but I wish her luck.
Two major heroes and a couple of sidekicks killed over the same weekend doesn"t look good. The surviving members of the Order Corps held a press conference on Sunday night, and for a change they didn"t seem smug and righteous while they told us all how safe they were making our fair city. They just looked really, really p.i.s.sed off.
In spite of the drama over the weekend I head over to Carl"s for our usual session. I"m feeling more optimistic that I can help him defeat Commander Justice, though I hope he can lay low for a while without losing the inspiration.
Laying low doesn"t seem to be an option: Commander Justice is waiting on the landing in front of Carl"s third-floor walk-up. Waiting for me, apparently.
"Angie, isn"t it?" He"s blocking the door.
"Yes."
"You come to visit old Carl every week, don"t you?"
"Well, yes- I"m his ma.s.sage therapist." I wonder what, if anything, Carl ever said about me during one of his rambling monologues. All I can wish is that I"d been better at my job.
"Really? Where"s your table?"
"We use Carl"s."
"Master Catastrophe has his own ma.s.sage table?"
"I"m sorry, who?"
He indulges me. "Carl."
"Carl has back trouble. He needs a lot of work."
"I"ll bet." He hasn"t budged. Up close I can see lines around his eyes that they never draw in the comic. He"s been in the game for as long as I can remember.
"Look," I say, trying for flirty, "you"re not going to be unchivalrous and make me admit I"m not that kind of ma.s.sage therapist, are you?"
His smile is grim. "I know your therapy has nothing to do with ma.s.sage, Angel. How are you doing, by the way? That must have been an awfully traumatic experience, being held hostage by the Squidinator."
Of course. All that footage, every shot, every bit of cell-phone video getting even more scrutiny with Arachn.o.boy"s death. I should have been lying low myself.
"It was . . . being grabbed off the street like that at random."
"I"m sure. I hope it didn"t throw off your lesson. I hear Master Adisa isn"t very forgiving of distracted students, no matter how good the excuse."
He takes a step closer, backing me up against the rickety banister. "The superhero community has suffered some serious losses. It"s completely unprecedented, and frankly some of us are considering a more . . . proactive approach to fighting crime."
I"m just about to try darting away when Carl steps out of his apartment. He"s wearing his costume without the boots, and his Master Catastrophe logo is crooked. He"s not carrying his death ray. He has his father"s old .45 service pistol.
His voice isn"t much above a whisper when he says, standing there in his grubby white athletic socks, "I will bring this city to its knees."
"Oh, please," Commander Justice says as he steps away from me and heads toward Carl. "A gun? Don"t you want to wave that piece-of-s.h.i.t death ray at me first? Don"t you want to monologue?"
Carl takes a deep breath. "Ready, aim, fire."
Commander Justice doesn"t have superspeed, and he isn"t bulletproof. In the end the corpse with the large and messy hole in his head was just a guy who spent a lot of time at the gym and had some good gadgets, a trust fund, and the unholy confidence to enforce his vision of morality while wearing his underwear on the outside.
"I did it," Carl says in shock. A fleeting look of triumph follows. "I finally did it." He stares at his permanently defeated nemesis. "What do I do now?" He sits down on the floor.
I sit down next to him and put my arm around his shoulders. "Hey," I say. "You know who"s a total a.s.shole? Civetman."
"Yeah," he says with a little smile, "I"ve heard that."
I go back home, taking a different route. I bolt the door. I do the accounts, but not financial ones.
Half the Order Corps is gone. If even a few of my clients take the initiative, it could tip this city"s balance in favor of supervillainy for good.
I consider joining the fray myself, but my doomsday device is nowhere near ready and my half-finished costume makes me look like the worst kind of badly drawn T&A cliche. It"s just not time for the world to meet the Angel of Death.
It won"t be long before another member of the Order Corps follows Commander Justice"s lead, so I"m about to hastily pack a bag when I notice I"ve got new voice mail.
It"s the kid who calls himself Burn Rate.
Look, the message says, I know you usually work with established villains, but I"ve had a breakthrough in the lab . . . I mean, something really big, and I want to launch it next week, but I can feel the urge to monologue, I mean, I know it"s going to be irresistible, and I don"t want to m.u.f.f this. I just . . . I think talking to someone would help. There"s a cough and a pause. Anyway, I did a test run the other day. It hasn"t made the news, of course it wouldn"t, what with the Squidinator and what happened at Order Corps HQ. But you can find it on YouTube, just search on Burn Rate.
I call him and set an appointment for this evening. Maybe the kid has talent. It"s a long shot, but my only other option is early retirement.
Burn Rate"s lair is in a discreet brownstone in a quiet neighborhood. I didn"t have time for the usual insurance, but I watched his YouTube videos and did some basic research. Burn Rate turned up about six months ago, apparently funding his villainy with cash, his civilian persona made selling a lucrative startup. Since then he"s pulled off a couple of impressive heists. He showed style, and his weapons looked good: elegant, efficient. He has promise.
Or so I thought until he started his monologue.
"Struggle all you like, Human Tornado! You"ll never escape my Electrostatic Cage!"
Not another Electrostatic Cage. Even superheroes carry enough loose change in their rubber-soled boots to discharge the d.a.m.n things.
"Ah ha ha ha!" Burn Rate says before he breaks character and whispers to me, "It"s not really electrostatic . . . I just want to see the look on his face when it vaporizes the quarter he tries to flip through it."
"Vaporize?"
"Yeah." He grins and gets back into character. "Nice try, Human Tornado, but you"ll never save this city from my Demoleculator!"
Whoa, whoa, whoa- this is new. "You"ve got a Demoleculator? A working Demoleculator?"
"Yep, that"s why I need your help. How do you not monologue about the world"s first fully functional Demoleculator?"
"But no one"s ever been able to stabilize the parakinetic matrix long enough to produce a reliable quantic field."
"I have," Burn Rate says.