“Half a billion?” Jake said slowly.
Nobody spoke. It was very, very quiet in the room. In the distance, a dog barked and a car honked its horn.
“Well, dadgum it,” Mitch said, “whyd’yuh think, moron? It was the last stop on their route. Everybody’s slack at the end of the day. Plus, we hadda hit them when they were close to water, an’ that was at the end of their route. Miguel said so, right Miguel?”
“Gringo’s right,” Miguel said.
“Plus,” Mitch said, barely waiting for Miguel to finish, “it’s only ‘cause Russ here was fast - thinkin’ on his feet that we didn’t have some black chick who can toss cars around gettin’ in our faces. What’ve we’d taken a half-bill? We’d have every cop in the city, every cape in the flippin’ world out to take us down. They’d find us, bet your skinny white asses on it, and we’d be spendin’ the rest of our lives with no blue rocks and in one of Uncle Sam’s crossbar hotels, with roommates who’d put a knife in our ribs just to get the room to themselves for the night.”
“You kinda got dramatic with that last part,” Miguel said.
“Yeah,” said Jake, “jail’s for losers, but most of the guys you’d see in there for theft aren’t dangerous, in fact . . .”
“Guys, let’s get back on track. This was a practice run for the real thing, remember? And we planned it this way so’s we’d come up with enough cash to stay under the radar, and keep the capes out’ve it. Now, we gotta chance to make a hundred times what we got today; who’s with me on this one?”
I smiled, picked up a can of beer and cracked it. “I’m in. I like what this blue shit does for me.”
Mitch found a Dr. Pepper. “I’m in too. That was damned fun, and I’ve got a good three weeks worth of vacation days I can burn on this. Rather do it making a cool mil than sitting my ass on a beach somewheres, makin’ someone else rich.”
Jake grabs a glass of wine, raises it, “Where do I sign? For my trouble I get a decent bed and a little house, and I get to be Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. Sounds good to this old conman.”
Miguel’s already been rummaging around for his own beer to raise- a brand I hadn’t seen before today but with a couple of Xs on the can. “I’m in. Tired of the gym. Want to sell it and retire, some neighborhood where I won’t smell piss everywhere I go.”
“Then we’re all in like flynn, boys!” Jane’s got a brown bottle of something she’s raising. We cheer, and for just a few seconds we’re all stupid kids again, ready to take on the world.
#
“Pan right, thirty degrees.”
Henry Musaki, aka The Dark, sat in his oversized black recliner in front of his computer and stared at the screen. His index finger was poised under his chin in what was now an unconscious attempt to imitate Harrison Ford in one of his many serious movie roles.
The screen, so ordered, spun quickly, showing the scanned scene from earlier in the day when Kenesha had tried to detain the old guy. TV News footage that had ended up being discarded; there was so much of that these days, pictures of capes like him that they could pick and choose what ran and what didn’t, rather than run with whatever they could get of capes in action.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Now, to focus on the old guy . . .
“Run facial,” Henry said, as the old man’s face appeared in closeup, about a hundred little yellow pixels appearing on and around it.
NOT IN DATABASE said the caption beneath the face in blocky white capital letters.
Henry grunted. Even state-of-the art equipment was notoriously unreliable in 1985. It’d be a good ten years before the kind of technology he needed would be available even to someone rich as he was.
He leaned forward and started typing at the keyboard, and stopped. Thinking. Instead he reached under the desk and pulled out a big, yellow phone book. While his computer was still loading the information he’d requested, he flipped pages until he found what he was looking for, then picked up a nearby receiver and dialed.
“This is Costume House,” said a bored, wheezing voice on the other line, “where you can live out a fantasy. How may I . . .”
“Joey,” Henry growled into the phone, “you know who this is.”
“Um, woah, yes, yes sir! Yes sir, I do sir, I . . .”
“You’re the superhero history expert? How are you with villains?”
#
“You fool,” cried Miguel, in the center of the ring of villains, “I am the greatest thief in the city! How do you dare to try and match wits with me?”
“I dare,” said Mitch, standing and reading the folded-back pages of the comic book, “for I am the Streak, the fastest man alive! And your days of petty thievery are over! Hand back those jewels you’ve stolen!”
“Ah, but my dear, rapid, arch-enemy” said Miguel, no book in hand, but a leering look on his face while he made a sweeping gesture with his right hand, “how do you plan to capture me, when you stand fixed, when your feet are held fast by . . . an inch of glue on the floor!”
“Zounds, you criminal!” Mitch said over the peels of laughter from the others, “It will take me at least a few minutes to remove my boots, which are attached to my costume! And during that time I will be immobile!”
“Precisely, fool!” said Miguel, “and by the time you free yourself, I will be long-gone from this hideout, with the jewels and the knowledge of your secret identity!”
“You’re almost there, Miguel!” Mitch said.
Miguel leaned in to Mitch. “Ha-HA!” he said, his voice exaggerated.
“He’s got it!” Mitch said, “Word-for-word, all of page twenty-four! Give ‘im his drink!”
“Thank you, thank you everybody!” Miguel said as the others applauded, “I’ll be here all week! Try the veal! Thank you, thank you! Who’s next?”
“Whuddabout Jane?” Jake said. “She hasn’t gone yet!”
“Naw, I don’t think so,” Jane answered. “I ain’t even looked at a comic book in years. Whar’d you dig these up, Mitch?”
“I always had ‘em. Every hero an’ villain I ever knew read ‘em over and over again, especially the parts where they were squaring off against their dread arch-enemy! C’mon, Jane? You tellin’ me you don’t remember any of the cheesy dialogue they gave us back then? Here, hang on- I went home to get ‘em special . . .Here’s the one I had’ve you, Jane! Careful with it- it’s worth a few bucks!”
Jane took the comic book, its page edges just starting to yellow with age. Mitch had carefully preserved it, maybe for years and years. They watched as Jane slowly turned the pages, looking at images drawn of her when she was barely out of her teens.
When she reached one page, though, her eyes widened a bit. She swallowed, and put the comic on a nearby table. “Ah can’t do this right now,” she said. “I need a drink.”
She left the room. A few minutes later they heard the door open and shut outside.
Nobody spoke for the next few seconds.
“What just happened?” Miguel asked.
Russ picked up the comic and looked at it. Jane had left it open on a splash page. Looking out at the reader was a tall man with a cowboy hat, a white vest and a series of playing cards sticking out of his belt.
“Aces n’ Eights,” Mitch whispered. “Sonofabitch, how could I’ve been so stupid?”
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TO BE CONTINUED....