Eh, what the hell, he thought, turning towards the bar. He was probably just nervous. Both the bombs had gone off. No one had gotten hurt, provided no one had decided to go dumpster-diving. Even so, the smoke bomb would make a loud bang, but would throw any [glass] shrapnel to hurt anybody even if they were hopping around for God-knew-what reason in an oversized metal trashcan.

The bar had a little, lit-up plastic sign that declared itself to be the “Tired Feat”, with little drawn cartoon bare footprints beside the words.

Tired feat . . . man, if that don’t describe me, nothing does, he thought. He’d been working hard most of his life, and all to show for it was the gym, a few dollars in the bank, and . . . well, a few kids’ lives changed for the better, true.

But he was tired. And he wanted a drink. More than he’d wanted one for a while.

The place actually managed to look smaller inside than outside. Three or four patrons sat on barstools and looked at him with little interest when he walked in. Miguel, long accustomed to life as a chicano in a white world, looked around for any evidence he might be in trouble if he took any more steps.

But he wasn’t. The place was hardly bigger than a sala, too small for a pool table or anything more than a bar and a half-dozen stools. This was an itty-bitty place that some guy had probably opened up as a side-project after he’d retired. Perfect. A beer, maybe two, and then back to the house to regroup and hopefully split the cash.

I’m gonna have me a drink. You know how long its been?

“Too long,” he said under his breath.

“What?” said the barmaid. She looked like Rosanne Barr’s fatter, uglier sister.

“You got Dos Equis?” he asked.

She swept her hand under the bar and stomped a green bottle in front of him.

Ah, happiness.

He dug into his wallet and had started counting bills when the long shadow had fallen over his shoulder.

“Miguel Hernandez.”

The voice behind me had the smallest echo in it, the kind used by almost every cape who can afford a voice distorter from Radio Shack to go with their cape and mask.

The difference here was that it wasn’t a distorter the man behind him was using. It was his actual voice.

Miguel turned around and saw the huge silhouette behind him, the long white curls of the Hanging Judge’s wig moving slightly as the night air tugged them through the open door.

“Hey, Giddy. Long time. Join me for a brew?”

The Hanging Judge paused. The other patrons of the bar paid for their drinks and left without waiting for the change. The barmaid left through the back door.

Once they were all gone, the bigger man sat on the bar stool next to Miguel.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

#

“Well? Jake?” Mitch’s voice was trembling like a virgin boy’s in a whorehouse. Jake had slid through the three holes dug in by the eye beam and leaped to his feet as soon as he’d hit the floor.

“Got my tubes, Mitch? We ain’t gettin’ any younger, ya know!”

“I got ‘em. Here they come.”

Mitch had taken the tanks out of the dufflebag that he’d brought in from the trunk of his car. A series of small, thin, plastic tubes had been in the bag alongside the tanks, and Mitch had spent the last few minutes attaching them to one another and then to the tank. The tubes looked to be made of white plastic, and rotated along several points and elbow joints.

The tubes had been folded in on each other like a series of jackknives, and Mitch poked the biggest group through the triple hole in the wall to Jake.

“I still think you should have gone with the more flexible material, Mitchel,” Monty said, “or at least tried using one of my eyebeams to gain access to the safe deposit boxes.”

“Oh, that’d be great, sure Monty. I can’t just attach a garden hose to this stuff, y’know. This is liquid nitro going in through these tubes. There’s flexible tubing for it, but the stuff has to be made of stainless steel, and vacuum- insulated to make sure you don’t end up with a burst and you end up losing anything from fingers to eyes to Mr. Happy if that stuff starts to spray.”

“You are, as always, strikingly descriptive.”

“Yah, well, save yer sarcasm, Adonis. Moreover, when the cops start lookin’ at the scene, they’re gonna start lookin’ for just that kind of toobin’, who bought it, and from where. These li’l pipes’re only gonna last us the ten or so minutes it’s gonna take Jake to freeze those locks, but it’ll be all we need. The right kinda flex-tubing costs hundreds, mebbe thousands of bucks, and every dollar’s gonna point right back at whoever bought it. This stuff costs a buck a yard at any hardware store in the country, they sell, like, millions of yards a year, and when we’re done we just stomp on it. It’ll break into a thousand pieces and none of ‘em’s gonna the pointing anwheres.”

Jake said, “Okay, Mitch, I got it lined up. Turn on the juice! Nice an’ slow.”

Monty watched Mitch slowly turn dials on the disguised and repurposed oxygen tank. Monty’s sour expression went unnoticed, so he tried to be a bit more of a jerk.

“And if Jake sprays himself by accident? Do we plan to take him to the local hospital and potentially expose ourselves?”

“He’s got gloves thick enough he could handle red hot steel if he needed to, and a welder’s visor to boot. Can’t you go write a book or something Monty? Your part’s done fer now. Jake? How goes it?”

“Two locks per box, two-hundred fifty boxes, equals five-hundred locks, an average of five seconds per squirt, equals twenty-five-hundred seconds total, means . . .”

“Forty-one point six minutes,” Monty’s voice jumped in, attempting to sound droll and bored.

“Eyah! Give the egghead a hero cookie! After that, another ten minutes to hit each one with my glassbreaker, an’ then we start passing the goods to ya. We’re lookin’ at bein’ done in an hour, and hour an’ a half. If Miguel an’ Russ did their jobs, cops’ll be busy twice that long just fillin’ out the paperwork over them smoke bombs of theirs.”

“Keep squirtin’ Jake. pressure’s good, but we’ve got a limited supply of the cold stuff.”

“Keep feedin’ it to me, Snowman, and we’ll be rich by sunrise.”

#

“So what’s the story this time, Miguel?”

“What’s it always? I’m not doing anything wrong. Just on my way home. Like the new wig, by the way. It’s you, all the way.”

The Hanging Judge had pulled his black cloth mask up until his chin and mouth were uncovered, just enough so that he could take the tall glass mug of beer and drain it halfway in a single drought. After he finished, he gave the smallest gasp of pleasure and a mild belch before slamming the stein down on the bar. “Yep,” he said, “my Methodist parents taught me to be thorough in all I did, but we couldn’t bring a drop of alcohol into the house. S’why I still bless the day I turned Catholic.”

“And when was that, amigo?”

“The day I died...."

#

...TO BE CONTINUED...