What is the best quality a goon can possess? The job asks a lot from you. One day you’ll be hauling and stacking crates, equipment, anything a job might need. The next you might be going toe-to-toe with cops and capes. It takes a lot of physical work, so it pays to be strong. I once knew a strong guy that worked for this crew of cowls in New England called “Sons of Hancock.” He could take a piece of metal rebar, wrap it in a towel, bite it, then bend it in half around his jaw.. He used to do that trick at bars to make some side money. When the Sons ran into The Mantis and Cicada he decided he could take them on 2 on 1 despite the call for retreat. I hear he lived the rest of his days being fed through a tube.

It aint just strength. Smarts count for a lot. I knew a guy that worked for the King’s Court in New York City. The Court used to hire guys on retainer, and this guy would take the retainer money, and before a job would go down he’d get himself pinched on some chump charge. That way, he never had to put himself at any risk, and collected a regular payday. He must have pulled that act for years before anyone caught on. He jumped on a plane when he caught wind the Court was on to him, which was smart for him. Too bad the Court sent the Jester to his mom’s house, and then the mom’s funeral.

See, the thing about doing this job isn’t about how strong or smart you are. The strongest guy I knew got himself paralyzed. The smartest guy I knew got his whole family killed. What these guys didn’t do, and what they should have done from the start, was the one thing they were hired for: Do what you’re told.

Of course, doing what you’re told can get you into trouble, too.

All the way back to 1928, I was working the door at a speakeasy in New Jersey, a decent walk away from the construction site for the George Washington bridge. The place was pulling a decent take shuffling workers in and out twenty four hours a day. Hooch and dice, dancing girls, jazz music, the works. The owner used to say he took more government money than the post office. You wouldn’t know it from my pay. Door work is good work, but you don’t get rich doing it.

One of the regular guys was this scientist. He struck me as some kind of government man, but the way he drank and gambled said “Outfit.” He laid twenties on all the staff one night after a good run. He liked the attention and he got a lot of it. One night he starts talking to us guys and says that he’s looking for a few hands. Some kind of score was in the taking, had a limited window,and it required men who were willing to “go beyond the edge of human ability.” It sounded nuts to me, but the money sounded real enough, so I signed up.

The score was a case of something the scientist said would “change the world.” The catch was that it was sitting on the bottom of the Long Island Sound. The case was a hot item, the government was on the job trying to get a Navy diver down there to salvage the ship. They didn’t have one within a day’s drive of the salvage site, so that was our window. Two Coast Guard ships were floating over the wreck and there were checkpoints on the roads all along Long Island. Getting to the wreck meant coming 12 miles off the coast of Connecticut, somewhere around Milford.

The job was simple: One man goes into the water in this prototype diving suit the scientist put together, walks two miles on the seafloor to the wreck, secure the box, and bring it back. Two men on the boat handle the oxygen supply, and the scientist said he would be running the operation from the radio.

Now, I’m not burdened with too much in the way of brains, but even a guy like me knows sending someone underwater to do this job was suicide. “That’s what makes it brilliant, those fools would never expect it!” I wasn’t convinced, but he said he had an edge. The money he was offering was good, too. Not just good for the work, but set-you-up-for-life good. A once in a lifetime payday that you don’t turn down for any reason. “Too good to be true” money.

I should have known better.

I got the duty of going into the water. I didn’t want to do it, but I didn’t complain. I do what I’m told. Besides, it wasn’t like I was going in the drink with nothing but my skivvies. The scientist gave me an injection of penicillin or something, for which I was grateful. If you know anything about the Long Island Sound you’d probably take everything in the pharmacy before diving in. I felt funny afterward, but then I was never that good with needles. Anyway, he showed me how the suit worked and showed me how to breathe in the helmet, gave me some motion sickness pills, and we were off to Connecticut.

We roared out into the darkness from Milford in an old fishing boat on one of the hottest nights I can remember. We waited as long as possible before getting me in the suit so I didn’t sweat to death. Just as we were seeing the lights of the Coast Guard ships the boys dumped me into the drink. I won’t lie to you, I thought I was a dead man the moment my feet hit the water. I sank like a stone. Eventually I reached the point where there was no light at all, and it felt like I was gonna fall forever. Finally I landed on the seafloor with an impact I could feel in my teeth.

The darkness was like nothing I ever experienced before. There was no light at all, just the sounds of the suit to remind me I was alive. I fumbled with the lighting gear for a few minutes before getting it turned on. I felt instant relief, but once I got my bearings it vanished. I was surrounded by miles of corroded metal and decaying wood. It was like suddenly appearing in a scrapyard. You wouldn’t believe all the crap down on the bottom of the sound. There must have been a hundred ships down there. Some were so old that there wasn’t anything left but the hull ribs. A radio guy once said that the ocean was a “graveyard of human endeavor.” I guess that’s what he was talking about.

Because of how broken up the path was to the ship I had to keep in constant contact with the scientist through the radio in the helmet, and he kept throwing me directions, “Correct left fifteen degrees and move forward for two minutes,” that kind of thing. I could tell I was getting close by the amount of lights I could see overhead, which must have been the two Coast Guard ships. There didn’t seem to be any commotion that I could tell, which felt pretty good. We were gonna pull a fast one on Uncle Sam, and they wouldn’t figure it out for days.

The ship wasn’t particularly big, but from what little I could see it might as well have been the Titanic, except that it was just some regular old hauler. The hull said “Shuttleforth” on the side, and I still don’t know if that was some kind of pun. It had a big split in the side, which explained how it went down. While there was a little cargo scattered inside, most of it was still lashed down in the hold. It was strange. Whatever sank the ship hadn’t done much damage to the stuff inside, and it went down so fast it didn’t have a chance to break apart.

Unstrapping the case wasn’t going to happen with the bulky gloves, so I had to make due with the knife attached to the gauntlet. Aside from it, there was some kind of winch device and a line launcher. At the time I had no idea what it was for, and the scientist didn’t feel particularly interested in telling me. You might think that’s short-sighted, but you gotta understand: I was being paid to do what I’m told, not to ask questions. It’s that simple. If you need to know, you will be told.

Of course, that’s not to say I didn’t have questions, I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t see how it was going to help me get a crate back to the surface. In fact, I wasn’t altogether certain how I was going to get back to the boat, either. But again, I had to trust that the scientist had it all figured out. After all, if I couldn’t get back, the case couldn’t get back, and that would make the whole exercise pointless.

“I have the case,” I radioed back to the scientist.

“Excellent, excellent,” the scientist said through the slightly tinny speaker in my helmet. “Everything is going to plan. Now, open the case.”

“Uh, are you sure about that?” At this point I couldn’t help myself. The case had about every warning you could imagine stenciled on it. Dangerous, unstable, toxic, do not touch, that kind of thing.

“There’s all kinds of warnings-”

“Just do it, you fool!”

I hesitated a bit, but my own logic came back to me. Putting me in a position to be killed was pointless. That didn’t stop my hands from shaking as I tried to work the catch on the case with the knife. It took a few minutes of fumbling, during which I had an impatient scientist asking for updates every few seconds. Once I worked the mechanism open, all hell broke loose.

The case lid flew open like it was spring loaded, and a bright blue light suddenly illuminated my entire vision. It startled me so badly I flinched and smacked my head on the back of the helmet. After spewing a few choice phrases I learned from angry dock workers as a child and failing to rub the lump I felt forming on the back of my head, I returned my attention to the case. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I could finally see the contents of the case, and I was thoroughly confused.

Resting in the case was a trident, but not just any trident. It shined as though it were made of neon. It was roughly seven feet long and looked like it came off the set of a gladiator film. I picked it up from the case and held it up for inspection.

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“Well, what do you see?!” The scientist was working himself up to a lather.

“It’s a spear,” I replied, unable to keep the confusion out of my voice.

“A trident, you ninny!” The scientist was as excited as I’d ever heard him be. “The magic trident of the Atlantean champion, Triton!”

“Who is Triton?”

It was at this point my helmet ringed with two sharp raps from behind. I turned slowly and spotted the source. Before me floated one of the biggest men I’d ever seen. Illuminated in the light of the trident he looked like a marble statue with living eyes. He was built like a tank, and looked like Errol Flynn. He was smiling at what was probably a stupid look of shock on my face.

“I am Triton,” the man said with a voice that cut through the water and my helmet. He pointed at the trident I held in my hand. “And I believe that belongs to me.”

“Uh, boss…” Clearly I was not prepared for what I was dealing with.

“That’s him, that’s him!” The scientist was shouting at me through the radio. “Fire the launcher!”

Without thinking, I pressed the red button on the suit’s gauntlet and felt a slight kick as the launcher fired a steel harpoon at the big man. With a speed you wouldn’t believe even if you saw it, Triton’s hand shot up and grabbed the harpoon before it made contact with his chest. I’m guessing I had another stupid look on my face because Triton’s grin got even broader.

“You have made a big mis-” His words suddenly became a scream as the line connected to the launcher suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree. Apparently the scientist had wired two hundred thousand volts through the suit with a cable attached to my air hose. After a moment the light from the cable went out and so did Triton, who slowly tipped backward, unconscious.

“Well?! Did it work?!” The scientist screeched in my ear, jolting me out of my shocked stupor.

“Uh, yeah, I think he’s just knocked out”

“Yes! Excellent!” I could practically see the scientist punching the air and dancing. “Finally! I’ve finally got that aquatic nuisance exactly where I want him!”

“That’s great boss, congratulations,” I said without much in the way of enthusiasm. There was still a lot about this job that I wasn’t being told, and I didn’t like where this was going. ”What do you want me to do now, boss?”

“What do you think, you soggy fool! I want you to kill him!”

I froze in place. I had never killed a man, and this was not what I had been hired to do. The money I was being paid was good, but if I’d known that it wasn’t going to be in my wheelhouse, I would have never taken the job. I’m not saying I’m a coward, or I’m not capable of killing someone, it’s just not my wheelhouse. My expertise was in thefts, robbery, stick-up jobs and the like. I was good at that kind of thing. Murdering a guy I never even met before for cash was not something I had any desire to do.

But that was the job. I took the money. When you take the money, you do what you’re told.

“Sorry, pal,” I said to Triton’s limp form floating in front of me. I had no idea if he could hear me, but I needed to talk myself into doing what I was about to do. It helped me to think we could level with each other as professionals. I raised the trident over my head to strike. “You shoulda stayed in Atlanta.”

Just as I brought the trident down his eyes flew open and his hand flashed out again, grabbing the trident before I could plunge it into his chest. The smile and good humor he’d had before was gone, replaced with a scowl and a fist that hit me hard enough to cause me to fly backward into a stack of stowed crates which shattered into a million pieces. Just as I was picking myself up from the wreckage, I looked up into the eyes of Triton, and another fist drove me back the way I came and into the side of the wreck’s hull. The ringing in my head and ears from that collision completely disoriented me. Luckily, there was Triton, picking me up from the deck and holding me up with one hand while his other held the trident aloft.

“No! No! NO!” The scientist was clearly aware that everything had gone sideways, but I had no idea how. Maybe the sounds of the sustained brutal beating I was experiencing was picked up on the radio, maybe the suit was sending him messages, maybe he just had an intuition. It didn’t matter to me. Triton did not look happy with me, and that trident looked particularly sharp. Instinctively, I tried to grab at the hand holding me, but I found I lacked the strength to do anything about it.

“You have gone too far this time, Vail,” Triton said as he glared at me. I could feel the metal buckle under his extraordinary grip. “As soon as I have taken care of your champion, you will face the wrath of a true champion!” With that said, he spun me around and flung me like a torpedo out of the ship and I smashed through a number of old sunken wrecks at a speed fast enough to snap the air hose and cable attached to my suit.

I could feel water begin to spray inside the suit from the number of openings that had broken through it. My vision had gone dark, likely because the lighting rig had been destroyed along with the power cable. I couldn’t move, it was becoming difficult to breathe, and I had just been through about five or so car crashes worth of battering. I felt myself slipping in and out of consciousness. My mind was playing tricks on me. One moment I was laying on the sea floor, but in the next…

I remember standing in the middle of the field I used to play in when I was a kid. It was at my Grandparent’s cabin somewhere in the Catskills. It was night time, and there was a slight breeze whistling through the maple trees. Fireflies twinkled in and out through the night like tiny stars. I couldn’t remember why I was there after all these years, or who this person was standing next to me. She stared at me silently as the wind picked up, my ears roaring with the sound of it. A firefly passed between us and became brighter, and brighter, and brighter…

The glow of the trident shined through the cracked faceplate of the helmet. I could feel water begin to creep up my chest. I couldn’t breathe right. I couldn’t move. I tried lifting my hand, and could barely raise it. The light from the trident wavered slightly, and I found that I was moving, very swiftly, through the water. I stared dully, unable to move, unable to turn my head to see where I was going. Suddenly, I broke through the surface of the water, and I once again saw light. I sucked in a breath so deep I could feel it in my toes. It was the last thing I could recall before I blacked out.

I woke up a month later in the prison hospital at Sing Sing. I had originally been taken to a hospital in the city and treated for a concussion, eight broken ribs, broken collar bone, hypoxia, numerous cuts and bruises, and a bacterial infection (I told you that water was disgusting). I spent weeks cuffed to a bed before they said I was out of the woods and could be moved. Another week in Ossining as a vegetable, and then I returned to a world filled with pain.

It was in the middle of the night. There was only one desk light on in the entire ward, but it might as well have been the surface of the sun. The low light hurt my eyes and I spent most of my first hours awake with my eyes closed. I was in a lot of pain, I couldn’t move, and I was desperately thirsty. I tried croaking out for help, but I didn’t manage much more than a rasping cough.

“Lay back,” said a nearby voice. I felt the rim of a straw touch the sandpaper of my tongue. “Here, sip this slowly.”

I did. Oddly, the water burned the raw skin of my mouth, tongue and throat. I couldn’t manage much of a swallow before I was wracked with a wet cough. After a few moments breathing through the pain of my chest and sides, I managed a weak thanks.

“Are you in significant pain?” The person I couldn’t see was poking at what I realized were bandages around my chest and arms. I tried nodding, and nearly threw up after my inflamed collarbone sent a lance of pain through my body. The hand steadied me again

“I am glad to see you yet live,” said the voice as it placed the straw to my lips again. I gave it another cautious sip. The voice continued, “It was a close thing for a time. What do you remember?”

I tried peering through the pain of my eyes at the speaker. I didn’t know who I was talking to, and wasn’t about to volunteer a confession to some flatfoot looking to make an easy arrest into an easy prosecution. The man was tall, built broad and I’d recognize those hands anywhere. I couldn’t help but flinch when he brought the water cup back..

“I see you remember me, in the least.” I could hear the grin in his voice, and I can’t say I liked it. A lot of scenarios were running through my head. Sick thrill, some kind of warning, finishing the job? I square my jaw and looked up into that darkness with whatever remaining strength I had left. Whatever happened after that, I was determined I’d go down with dignity.

“Ha! You even remind me of my little brother.” He laughed in my face. So much for dignity. “Relax, I am not here to harm you.” He set the water aside and planted himself on a stool that creaked under his weight. He stared at his hands for a time, long enough that I could tell that he had something on his mind. Triton, hero of mythology, was squeamish about something. I started sweating.

“Know you of this Edmund Vail?” My blank stare must have answered his question. “This man you called boss, he is known to me. The brother I speak of had been captured by this man. He, like you, is but flesh and blood, but he has a certain…cunning to him.” Triton’s stare pierced through me and into the far wall. “This man has, for some time, tried to unlock the secrets of the Gods. His knife cut into Neptune, his needles drained him of his blood. His intention was to become like us, but he…”

His voice trailed off, and I looked away. Grief is a personal thing. We’re professionals. I gave him his moment.

“My fight is not with you,” Triton finally managed as he stood up from the stool. “Steer wide of Edmund Vail. His fate is sealed. Your fate…” His voice trailed off. He shook his head, and left without another word. I never saw him again. Some time later I read in the papers about that brother of his. There wasn’t a word for what he did to that man. I also heard that Triton got one back for the brother, but I never did hear what happened to Vail. Or my money.

For my part? I spent a year in Sing Sing for trespassing. Since I didn’t steal anything and Triton wasn’t around to testify, they offered me a deal and I took it. I spent a lot of the time recovering and thinking about what Triton said. At the time I was so banged up I didn’t even know if he was real. I never put together what he was telling me. I wouldn’t for over a decade.

So I was out for a year, took the beating of a lifetime (the first of many), and all I had to show for it was a face-to-face with one of the original capes. Like I said, I do what I’m told, and like I said, doing what you’re told can get you into trouble. That’s the job. That’s the business that we’re in.

Of course, it aint all bad breaks and beatings. The scores we take are the reason we stay in the business, but some scores are what we live for…