Playing For Keeps

by Mur Lafferty

  The perky hostess smiled at her. “M’am, are you waiting on a table or would you like to sit at the counter?”

  “My friends are over there,” Keepsie said, pointing. Michelle waved.

  “Then feel free to join them,” she said. Keepsie hated her at that moment. So cheerful, so unafraid.

  Peter, Ian and Michelle all looked better rested than she felt. They even managed to smile at her. She hated them too.

  Ian slid into the booth to make room for her. “Keepsie, you look like shit.” She glared at him.

  Michelle kicked him. “Did you sleep at all?” she asked Keepsie.

  “Not well,” Keepsie said, appropriating Michelle’s coffee and taking a swig. She made a face. “God, don’t you use any sugar?”

  “Not when I’m making it for me,” Michelle said, grinning.

  Peter signaled for the waitress and ordered Keepsie a large coffee while she stared miserably at the menu. The waitress looked down at her. “The usual, Keepsie?”

  Keepsie looked up. “Oh, hi Wanda. Yeah, the usual would be good.”

  The older woman waited for a moment, her hand on her meaty hip. “You must be in a mood today or something, Keepsie.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re messing it all up. You know, you ask me, ‘Hey Wanda, when are you going to come work for me?’” Wanda’s voice hit a falsetto that didn’t sound like Keepsie at all. “And I say, ‘When I divorce the owner of this joint and marry you, Keepsie,’ and we all laugh.”

  Keepsie forced a smile. “Sorry, Wanda, I’m distracted today. But you know, if you ever chose to leave, you have a job waiting for you at Keepsie’s Bar.”

  “Sure, when I divorce the owner of this joint and marry you!” Wanda said, chortling, and took Keepsie’s order to the kitchen.

  Ian watched Wanda waddle away. “OK, that was weird.”

  “Wanda’s OK,” Michelle said. “First Wave, perfect memory for everything, but it makes her a little too attached to rituals. The old jokes are the best ones in her mind.”

  “Oh. What the hell is she doing waiting tables with a power like that?”

  Michelle’s voice dropped low. “She’s not terribly bright. She can remember anything but she doesn’t process well. She fell in love with Larry in high school and wanted to help him run this diner. She’s perfectly happy, and it’s nice having someone who knows your usual order.”

  “You should see her when we want to order something different, though,” Keepsie said.

  Wanda returned with Keepsie’s coffee, along with a sugar bowl. Keepsie managed a weak grin that slipped from her face the minute Wanda turned her back.

  Peter leaned across the table. “Are you all right?”

  Keepsie poured too much sugar into her coffee and regretted it with her first gulp, wincing as she burned her tongue. She put down the coffee cup and slid her hands across her face. “I’m just not ready for this. I didn’t sleep well and I have no idea what to do about this whole thing.”

  Peter nodded. “Yes, I’m at a loss myself for what to do. We are skirting the edge of illegal vigilantism here. We are also skirting the edge of refusing to cooperate with an officer.” He drummed his fingers on the table.

  Keepsie stared at the table, avoiding their eyes. “You guys aren’t in it, you know. This is me, my power. No offense, but none of you could be keeping this thing from them.”

  Michelle leaned over the table and poked Keepsie’s arm. “We’re not going to leave you sandwiched between the heroes and bad guys. No way.”

  That was it. That was what she had feared. Her power alone was working to stymie those who wanted the device, and she was terrified her friends would call it her problem alone and abandon her. The relief that flooded her was palpable, and she smiled.

  Keepsie realized that Ian was prattling on. Only the occasional “dude” and “what the fuck” had entered her consciousness.

  “—I mean, I know all I can do is give the damned heroes a face full of shit, but you, Keepsie, you’re stronger than they know, and you can hold them back until...” Ian’s face became almost angelic with the dawning comprehension. “No, I’ve got it, by God, we’re going to take the device to the SCU Stadium and sell tickets to an old fashioned smackdown! Doodad, Clever Jack, whoever else they’re working with, and all the heroes! Winner gets the device! We’ll make a fortune in ticket sales, the device is out of your hair, and maybe some of them will be so nice as to kill each other off during the fight!”

  He looked so pleased with himself that Keepsie laughed. Michelle giggled, and Peter looked as if he would consider it for a moment. He shook his head.

  “There’s no way we could make that legal,” he said.

  “Dude, lighten up, I just thought our girl here could use a laugh,” Ian said.

  “Thanks, Ian,” Keepsie said. Wanda had arrived with their food and Keepsie didn’t want her to overhear their conversation.

  “So,” Michelle said, spreading paper on the table in between the plates, syrup and butter. “I came to some conclusions regarding the villains. I think the Academy made them the same time they made the heroes, and I think they made them to grab political power. Throw some villains out there, then throw some heroes after them, deny all knowledge of the villains and make buddy-buddy with the mayor.”

  She paused to take a bite of pancake while Keepsie looked over the documents in front of her. Most of them were from conspiracy sites, but they did seem to match what Clever Jack had started to tell them the previous evening.

  “Since 2012, the laws have equated heroes to law enforcement officers, making them part of the Seventh City Government, eligible for salaries out of our taxes,” Michelle said, handing Keepsie a folder of old newspaper articles. “Every mayor Seventh City has had since 2010 has been endorsed by the Academy. They’re a political powerhouse.”

  She lowered her voice and they leaned in to hear her. “This is truly a hero-run town, even moreso than we’d thought.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” said a voice over Keepsie’s and Michelle’s shoulders.

  The man who had been reading his paper when Keepsie had arrived was leaning over the back of the booth, grinning at them.

  “Hello, Clever Jack,” Keepsie said.

  6

  There was a pause. Peter’s eyes darted around; no one had noticed the wanted man casually sitting in the diner. Clever Jack wore a baseball hat and a denim New York Yankees jacket, blending in with the other customers so that even Peter, Keepsie, Michelle, and Ian hadn’t noticed him.

  That’s real powers for you.

  “Did you tell the heroes I said hello last night?” Clever Jack asked, grinning.

  “No, we were too busy trying to not get arrested, thanks,” said Ian.

  “Yeah, sorry ’bout that.” Clever Jack didn’t sound very sorry at all. “Thanks for letting me go, by the way.”

  “I’m not sure I did the right thing, there,” Keepsie said.

  “Can I join you?”

  Everyone looked at Keepsie, who looked uncomfortable with the leadership thrust onto her shoulders. She paused, and Michelle took up the role.

  “Sure. Five minutes, Jack, that’s all,” she said. “We wanted to enjoy our food.”

  “Now that’s bullshit and you know it,” Clever Jack said. He slid out of his booth and snagged a spare chair from a vacant table. He put the chair at the end of their booth and was in it before Peter could blink. He moves like mercury. Peter got a distinct feeling that they should not anger this man. Still, no one in the diner seemed to notice Clever Jack.

  The villain reached forward with both hands and grabbed a piece of bacon from Ian’s plate with his left and Michelle’s folder on the Academy with his right. Keepsie looked at him with obvious dislike, but he ignored her as he munched and flipped through the folder.

  “Oh yeah, sure, go ahead, take my bacon,” Ian said. “And you say you’re not a villain.”

  Clever Jack looked over the folder at
Michelle. “You’re pretty smart to pull all of this together.”

  She smiled, tight lipped, at him.

  “But you got one major thing wrong, miss. You got it right where I came from, but not why I left the teat of the Academy.”

  “My mama’s from Elk Park, NC. She got knocked up by her prom date,” Clever Jack said. “There was nowhere local to have an abortion back then, so she drove to Charlotte to get help. In the Planned Parenthood office, she ran into an Academy official who was stalking the waiting room. This woman offered my mama free health care, free pediatric care, a future for me and even a college education for her, if she would just have me in Seventh City and allow the Academy to adopt me.”

  “But I thought heroes were the ones with poor mothers getting prenatal care?” Ian asked.

  Clever Jack gave him a withering look. “You’re not too bright are you? I was raised in the Academy; I was engineered to be a hero.”

  They looked at each other. “What happened?” Michelle asked finally.

  “What happened?” Clever Jack looked at her as if she were an idiot. “I didn’t want to be their lapdog. They studied us, tested our powers, trained us, yeah, but they also gave us ethics courses, told us how to think and how to serve and what to do in this or that case.

  “We were bred for this, like horses. What happens with a thoroughbred decides not to run? They will give it extra attention. Then they will beat it. Then, if it still won’t run, they might put it out to pasture for stud duty, if they want to risk continuing the undesirable personality quirk. But what if,” Clever Jack leaned forward in his chair, whispering intently, “what if that horse could melt metal with his mind, or influence the tides, or could fly faster than sound? Do you think they would just put it out to pasture?”

  Keepsie was very still. “No. They would put it down.”

  Clever Jack exhaled loudly. “Finally, someone with a brain. Yes. There were some of us who did not embrace our destinies with open arms. From time to time, the best were apprenticed to the heroes. Well, of course White Lightning and the others got their apprenticeship, and the rest of us were treated like second-rate heroes, then like criminals. Being better than any normal human at something was just not enough for them.”

  Peter stiffened. Michelle and Keepsie exchanged glances, and Ian slammed his fist onto the table. Clever Jack jumped.

  “Now you’re speaking a language we can understand!” Ian said. “So you were treated like we were? By the Academy that raised you?”

  Clever Jack looked in turn at all of them. “I don’t know how you were treated. I was in a cell in the lower levels of the Academy for ten years. But if you tried to get acknowledgement for your lesser abilities from the Academy I’m sure it went about as well as farming tobacco at a mile above sea level.”

  Peter shook his head in amazement at the comparison. “We were all rejected from the Academy for being of insufficient power, yes. If you didn’t know this, how did you know we had powers to begin with?”

  “Doodad told me,” Clever Jack said. “He’d been out of his cell for a lot longer. I broke out several years ago, but headed home to the mountains of North Carolina.”

  “To find your mother?” asked Michelle.

  Clever Jack looked down at the table. “I suppose. She wasn’t there. I don’t know where she went after the Academy gave her the ‘Get Out Of The Mountains Free’ card. She could be dead now, for all I know. Internet searches don’t help much; the Academy didn’t tell us our parents’ names.”

  “Did most of the women leave their babies to be raised by the Academy?” asked Keepsie.

  Clever Jack sipped at his coffee. “All of them.”

  Michelle choked on a bite of scrambled eggs. “You mean they all just abandoned their babies at the Academy, took their checks and ran?”

  “Most of these women didn’t want their babies anyway,” Clever Jack said, his voice dull. “And the Academy didn’t do anything to encourage them to have contact with us. Like those surrogate women who don’t hold their babies after they have them—no connection.”

  Peter was moved, but the image of the violence Clever Jack had brought to Seventh City remained with him. “So instead of going on Oprah, you decided to harm innocent people?”

  Michelle, Ian and Keepsie looked at him in surprise. “Dude, that’s cold,” Ian said.

  Clever Jack gave Peter an appraising stare. “If you want to look at it that way, yeah, I hurt innocents. I hurt anyone I could in order to escape the cell they threw me in when they realized I couldn’t be a hero. I hightailed it out of town and headed to the only home I could claim.”

  “And Doodad called you back?” Peter said.

  “Yes. He needs that device back, Keepsie,” Clever Jack said. He put his hand on hers, and she pulled it back quickly.

  “Why did he give it to me in the first place?” she asked, not looking at him.

  “He knew you could keep it safe while he had other business to attend to. You were the only one he knew couldn’t be forced to give it over to Timson and her lapdogs—and he knew you were unlikely to be convinced to do it.”

  “Wait, how much do they know about Keepsie?” Ian asked.

  “More than you think,” Clever Jack said. “They keep track of all First and Third Wavers, watching for vigilantes. Since your bar is right on their doorstep, you’re pretty easy to keep an eye on.”

  “But heroes never come in the bar,” Keepsie said.

  “Heroes don’t, but they’re not the only people associated with the Academy,” Clever Jack said. “Now, don’t ask me who the spy is, cause I don’t know, but Doodad says there are some pretty fat files on all of you.”

  Peter watched Keepsie carefully. She stared at the table and fiddled with an artificial sweetener packet. Instead of seeming upset, she appeared to be thinking something over very hard.

  She raised her head and looked at Clever Jack. “I still need some time. Come to my apartment tonight at eight o’clock. I’ll have an answer for you then.”

  With his characteristic liquid grace, Clever Jack stood and slid the chair back under the table. “Done.” He pulled his baseball cap low over his eyes and headed out the door.

  “What are you going to do, Keepsie?” Michelle asked.

  “I don’t know,” Keepsie admitted, draining her coffee mug and grimacing. “But I’ll know tonight. I’ll need your help, though.”

  “You’ve got it,” Peter said at once.

  She smiled at him. “Good. Now, where’s Wanda with that coffee pot?”

  It turned out that Wanda was approaching them as she said this. As she filled each of their mugs, she said, “Your friend didn’t pay his bill, Keepsie, are you picking it up?”

  * * * * *

  After grudgingly picking up the tab for Clever Jack’s breakfast, they left the diner.

  “We can go around and around on the villains versus heroes thing all day. The thing is,” Keepsie said, “that the Academy is full of thugs. But we still don’t know what this thing is or what Doodad plans on doing with it.”

  “He’s been spreading mischief for weeks,” Peter said. “There was no breaking out of his cell and finding a safe place to be like Clever Jack did; Doodad stayed here. He may even have a lair or something by now.”

  Ian nodded fervently. “Dude just tries to make trouble for the heroes, and we get caught in the crossfire.”

  “But isn’t that what I did last night? Make trouble for the heroes because I could?” Keepsie asked quietly.

  Michelle looked at her, stricken. “You’re not like them, Keepsie!”

  Keepsie kicked a rock into the gutter. “Really? I didn’t have any affection for Doodad. He scared the shit out of me yesterday. He kidnapped me and used me; he knew exactly how I’d react when the heroes came calling. And still I didn’t help the Academy. White Lightning saved my life and I can’t do anything but hate him because of how he treated me.”

  “Yeah, but he’s an asshole, Keepsie. No one
can like that guy,” Ian said.

  They walked on toward the bar. It was not yet time to open, but they figured it was a good place to talk in private and discuss Keepsie’s options. Peter had no idea what he would do in her position.

  “Pretty day,” Michelle said after a while. They made agreeable noises.

  “Yeah, real nice, except for the heroes flying around,” Ian said. Keepsie snapped her head up.

  Peter followed her gaze. White Lightning was flying over them, arms outstretched, cape flapping behind him. He looked as if he was heading for the Academy. The few people on the street called out to him and waved, and a few women blew kisses.

  “It’s just a hero,” Peter said when he saw Keepsie’s stricken expression.

  “‘Just’.” Keepsie replied. She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “I can’t do this, guys. I can’t fight them. I’m scared of what the villains will do with the device and I’m scared of what the heroes will do to me.”

  “It’s not like they can take anything from you,” said Ian.

  “True, but they can arrest me. I can still protect all of my stuff when I’m sitting in jail. I’m going to give it to them.”

  Michelle put her hand on Keepsie’s shoulder. “We’re with you, Keepsie, whatever you decide.”

  “Thanks,” Keepsie said.

  Peter looked up the street and his heart fell. “Um, Keepsie. You need to see this.”

  People were collected at the top of the stairs leading down to Keepsie’s Bar. Police officers. Three tall men, complete with blue hats, badges, doughnut bellies and guns (and one even sported the handlebar moustache), accompanied by a shorter black man in a suit. They stood expectantly and watched Peter, Keepsie, Ian and Michelle.

  “Shit. What do we do now?” Ian asked.

  “Go talk to them, I expect. They have guns, we don’t,” Peter said.

  Ian pushed up his sweatshirt sleeves. “The hell we don’t.”