by David Liss
Andy looked pleased. “My brother likes to brag when he’s drinking,” he replied, “and if he’s breathing, he’s drinking.” It seemed like too much to hope for, but the kid knew exactly where the building was. His brother had shown it to him when—big surprise—he’d been drinking.
Figuring he’d gotten everything he was going to get out of Andy, Peter sprayed a dissolving agent on the webs.
“Okay, get out of here.”
The kid looked over at his gym bag. “Can I go back to the store and get my snakes?”
“Andy…” Spider-Man said in a warning tone, like a parent talking to a toddler.
“Right.” Andy nodded. “No more stealing.”
Spider-Man let out another sigh. “Andy, what do you do all day, other than listen to your drunk brother?”
The kid shrugged. “I don’t know. Come up with plans, I guess.”
“Listen, you seem like a nice enough kid. I’ve got an idea that’s a lot better than sticking you in a cell. There’s a place in Little Tokyo,” Spider-Man said. “It’s called F.E.A.S.T., and it’s where the homeless go for help. They could really use some volunteers, and you’d pick up some marketable skills working there. It’s a win-win kind of thing. What do you say?”
Andy’s face lit up again. “That would be great. I like being helpful.”
“Okay then, you should skedaddle before the cops show up.”
With that the Web-Slinger turned and shot out a strand, pulling himself into the air. This had been an amusing, and occasionally frustrating, little interlude, but now there was something really exciting in the works. Ruining the Scorpion’s night seemed like a good way to make the night very eventful.
THE construction site was at 46th Street and Ninth Avenue, just where Andy said it would be. Spider-Man half-expected to find an empty lot or a supermarket, maybe even a giant hole in the ground. Instead there was the skeleton of a building that rose up twenty or so stories. So far, the kid’s info was right on target.
He circled around it a few times to make sure there weren’t sentries, or even just a bunch of guys with guns, but the place looked about as deserted as—what was the right metaphor?—a construction site after work hours. Yep, that sounded right. None of which meant Andy was wrong. It could still be a staging area, and if the opportunity to disrupt one of the Scorpion’s operations presented itself, there was no way Spider-Man was going to pass it up.
Before heading in, he tried again to call MJ. He’d made an attempt after leaving the dock, but it had gone straight to voice mail. Same result.
“Me again,” he said. “Just wanted to hear your voice before valiantly throwing myself into danger. But I know you’re busy, so it’s cool.” He hoped his tone conveyed that he wasn’t really serious, but also that he was a little serious.
Convincing himself that the construction site was empty, he landed in a central area on a lower floor, one that looked reasonably solid, and began to look around. First he checked the areas closest to the ground. Tools, piles of concrete blocks and rebar, equipment for pouring cement. No sign that it was being used for criminal purposes, but every sign that it was being used for construction—and recently, too. Why would Scorpion stash his gear in an active work site?
Maybe Andy had been wrong, after all.
Then he started getting a feeling. Not a Spider-Sense feeling, but a regular old something’s not right feeling. It seemed reasonable that a thief might sell him a line, give him a bigger fish to go after as a way of getting off the hook. But Andy didn’t seem like thinking on his feet was a particular strength, and the information about the building site, about Scorpion, had been pretty specific.
Webbing up to the next floor, he looked around for signs of any nefarious activity. Nothing he wouldn’t expect to find at an ordinary, non-villainous building under construction. It looked like this was going to be a waste of time, but he still intended to check things out floor by floor. He had to be sure.
Climbing the girders, he moved to the next floor up, which he figured would be just as empty and non-evil as the last. Then he heard something. A clatter, like metal falling on metal, and it was coming from further up. Way further up. He also felt something, a faint prickling at the back of his neck—his Spider-Sense was tingling. That meant he was getting closer to danger.
While danger wasn’t a good thing, it did suggest that he hadn’t been outsmarted by a criminal-in-training. That was something. Moving to the outside of the building, he began to climb, making almost no noise. As he approached the roof, his Spider-Sense began buzzing more aggressively. Just then his phone rang with a call from MJ.
After trying to reach her all night, he didn’t want to ignore her. She’d understand if he did, of course. She was great that way. Mostly he just wanted to hear her voice.
“Hey,” he said as he slowly pulled himself up onto the roof.
“That’s your going-into-action voice,” she said, doing what he thought was a pretty fair imitation of his going-into-action voice. “Everything okay?”
The tingling increased, telling him the bad guys probably knew he was there—which meant they were lying in ambush. It was still relatively low-level, so they probably weren’t going to pose much of a problem. He could talk and fight at the same time.
Just to be safe he said, “Yeah, but I’m about to smack down a bunch of thugs, and chances are they’re armed. If I stop talking, it’s not something you said. Unless you say something totally insane and I have no response to it.”
MJ laughed. Peter loved the sound of her laugh. Even after all this time.
“Well, I can call you back,” she said wryly.
“No, this is going to be pretty routine,” he said. “And I’ve been trying to reach you all night.”
“The sixteen voice mails gave that away.”
“Twelve tops. Where are you?”
MJ said something, but it was drowned out by the sound of gunfire. He was already up in the air, shooting out a web and contorting himself to avoid the bullets without thinking about what he was doing. His enhanced spider reflexes, plus eight years of experience at not getting shot, made it pure instinct. While spinning in the air, Peter took stock of the situation.
Four guys, each with firearms.
They jerked their heads left and right, as if he had vanished into thin air. These idiots didn’t know to look up? It was almost too easy.
“You still there?” MJ asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “The action’s started.”
“There’s no reason we have to talk this second,” she said. “I don’t want you to get hurt just because—”
“Oh, please,” he said, cutting her off. “It’s not a problem.” He pointed his web shooter at one of the gunmen, whose wrist was then attached to the wall behind him. The gun fell harmlessly to the ground. “That’s one down.” He landed behind another guy and shot out with both web shooters, pressing him face-first against a wall, his features all squished. “You should see these guys. It’s hilarious.” Using the suit’s built-in camera, he snapped a picture. “I’ll show you later.”
“Something to look forward to,” she replied sarcastically. As she did, another assailant came around the corner and raised his gun. A quick web, and the guy was hoisted into the air, attached to an overhang.
“The cops might have a hard time getting that one down.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re having fun,” MJ said, “and don’t take this the wrong way, but listening to you narrate your exploits isn’t what I need to be doing right now.”
“But I’m using new tech!” he protested. “Girlfriends are supposed to love it when their guys show off their new gadgets,” he added. “Aren’t they?”
MJ laughed. “Call me back when you’re done playing.”
“Hold on—I’m just getting the last one now. He’s creeping around in the dark, like being low means I won’t be able to find him. It’s adorbs.”
“I’m hanging up in thirty seconds.”
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“I only need ten,” the Web-Slinger said. Then he shot out webbing and incapacitated the last of the quartet.
“I’ll call you back,” he said abruptly, and he cut the connection.
His Spider-Sense went off like a tingly explosion. It wasn’t exactly an eleven on a ten scale, but it was easily an eight. These guys weren’t the threat, they were the bait, and Spider-Man had just blundered into a trap.
THE Scorpion had never much impressed Spider-Man with the quality of his henchmen. In fact, he rarely even used henchmen. Clearly he needed to rethink his employment agency, or however these guys operated. Have a little chat with the people down in HR. But these four had been underwhelming, even by Scorpion’s standards.
They’d been expendable.
That, it seemed, had been the point.
Whoever he faced next would be the real threat.
It wasn’t Scorpion. That was for sure. This guy was about Spider-Man’s own height, slim and wiry like him, dressed all in black, nothing fancy—sweatpants and a loose sweatshirt. Over his head he wore a black balaclava, so nothing of his face was visible.
Or her, he supposed. There was no reason to assume this bad guy wasn’t a bad woman. Just a bad person, though the only evidence he had of that was the tingling sensation that told him he was in for a serious fight. He led with a few web-shooter bursts, thinking maybe he could end the conflict before it began.
The webs hit nothing but wall. The person in black was gone, tumbling through the air. For a second, Spider-Man thought that the moves looked familiar—like he’d know who this was, if he could just remember where he’d seen a fighting style like that before. Then it came to him.
He’d seen those moves on news coverage.
This guy moved like Spider-Man. Like him!
“Nice style,” he said, springing up to a far wall, then another, then another. The three-spring fake-out. It never failed to fool the garden-variety thug. An enemy couldn’t dodge something if he didn’t know where it was coming from.
This guy dodged it.
Time to shut him down.
Bracing himself on a wall, Spider-Man lobbed out a barrage from his web shooters—where the guy was, where he was likely to be in the next fraction of a second, where he might leap unexpectedly. Blanket coverage like that used up a lot of web fluid, though, and it had been a busy night. He was a fussy driver who liked to fill the tank long before it was empty, and he was already running low. Of course, the typical fussy driver didn’t have to worry about being shot, stabbed, crushed, trampled, electrocuted, stung, or bludgeoned if he cut things a little close.
None of the webs hit home, because his assailant leapt and bounced and lunged in a style that was all too familiar. A second barrage missed, too, and Spider-Man started to wonder why he was bothering with this guy. Other than trespassing—a crime Spider-Man had also committed, when he thought about it—the guy hadn’t actually broken any laws. Even if he was able to catch this person, more likely than not he’d walk.
On the other hand, Andy sent him to this place, where there just happened to be a bunch of decoy henchmen and a guy with some awfully familiar abilities.
“This isn’t passing the smell test,” Spider-Man said, “and I’m not talking about your body odor—though that doesn’t pass the smell test, either.”
He leapt in, letting his instincts take over. He was ready to dodge, shift, roll, and lunge—whatever it took to get this guy at a disadvantage. The fun had gone on long enough. It was time for his opponent to be webbed up and explain just what was going on here.
Spider-Man landed behind the Man in Black. At least that was the plan, but his opponent was already gone.
No wonder the guys I fight get so angry, he thought. That’s just annoying. Then he was struck from behind. It was like getting slammed by a speeding truck. His foe hit hard and fast, sending Spider-Man skidding across the paved surface. Then the guy was on top of him. He moved like Spider-Man, but fought like a brawler. There were hands everywhere, slamming into his face, his chest, grappling without letting up.
“Hands off the merchandise,” he grunted. He slammed his forehead forward, hopefully into his attacker’s general nose area. At least that was the plan. The guy jerked back, avoiding the blow. The move allowed Spider-Man to break free and leap to the scaffolding. He turned and aimed with his wrist, but there was no one to hit.
He tensed, ready for a surprise attack from any angle, but then he realized his Spider-Sense was no longer thrumming. It had gone to sleep. He moved around the perimeter of the roof, fast and erratically, changing his trajectory and speed to make an ambush more difficult, but it became apparent that this was nothing more than an exercise in caution.
The Man in Black was gone.
“So, no Scorpion is what you’re telling me,” he said to himself. This whole thing had been a setup, but a weird setup. The Man in Black had moved like Spider-Man, yet fought like a biker, and held his own. The throbbing on Spider-Man’s cheek suggested he’d done more than hold his own. He had, in fact, had a real shot at beating the crap out of the original.
So why had he taken off while he was winning the fight? There was a lot he didn’t know, but the bits and pieces suggested a new and dangerous enemy with a completely unknown plan. In other words, trouble. He needed intel, and, at the moment, the guy who set him up and made him look like a chump seemed like a pretty good source.
So it was back to the cruise terminal. Andy would be long gone, but even though he’d pulled the wool over Spider-Man’s eyes, he still wasn’t God’s gift to intelligence. With any luck, he’d left some kind of clue behind, like his wallet or the keys to his apartment. If he couldn’t find anything there, he’d check the snake store afterward.
As he swung toward his destination, however, he felt his stomach drop. It didn’t take spider-powers to tell. Flashing blue and red lights, a police perimeter, the squawk of radio chatter.
Something had gone horribly wrong.
* * *
ANDY was dead.
Spider-Man perched in the shadows on an upper deck of one of the ships and looked down at the scene below. The body was surrounded by a dozen police officers. They hadn’t even bothered to call EMTs—there was no reason to do so. There was a large pool of blood on the deck beneath him, and a big stain on the front of his shirt.
An hour ago, the kid had been alive…
A woman was circling the scene, systematically taking photos with her phone. A guy in plain clothes—probably from the coroner’s office—was studying the body and taking notes on a tablet. A handful of uniformed officers combed the scene with flashlights, searching for clues. A mustached man, most likely a plainclothes detective, stood impassively, sipping coffee from a Greek-themed paper cup and staring into the distance. His tie flapped in the breeze.
There had to be someone behind this—some sort of mastermind. The kid had just been a pawn. Even more alarming, whoever was working with the fake spider-person had been confident that the real Spider-Man would respond to the break-in at a snake store. That meant that someone had been tracking his movements, following where he’d gone that night, or what kinds of police calls were likely to grab his attention—or both. That suggested an alarming investment of time and energy.
Peter didn’t like to let emotions cloud his thinking, but the fact was that Andy was lying dead down there. He’d been a person, and probably not a terrible person. He’d had the right to live and make mistakes and hopefully learn from them, and someone had taken that away. They’d done it in order to mess with Spider-Man.
That made it personal.
It also meant that Spider-Man had information the police needed. The trick was figuring out the best way to pass it along. The guy with the coffee and the flapping tie was probably in charge, so Spider-Man would need to get him alone. Unfortunately, the detective showed no signs of moving.
“Hold it right there!”
The voice startled him. Raising his arms in the air,
he turned slowly to face a woman—holding a very nasty-looking weapon of the sort favored by the New York police officers. Despite the pistol she held, his Spider-Sense hadn’t tingled, so she didn’t present an immediate threat.
“You know the routine,” she said. “Hands where I can see them.”
“Oh, come on,” Spider-Man said. “Is this really necessary?” He could think of plenty of answers, but wanted to hear what she had to say.
“It’s necessary,” the woman replied, “because you’re suspect number one in a murder.”
SHE was a slender woman in her thirties, wearing jeans, a leather jacket, and a yellow button-down shirt. She looked like she meant business, though she didn’t seem terribly eager to shoot him.
Spider-Man relaxed a little.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded of him.
“I didn’t kill him,” he answered. As soon as he did, it sounded lame.
“I know that,” she snapped. “Unless you’ve figured out how to hide a pistol in that skintight suit of yours. It’d stick out like a tumor.”
“Thanks?” he offered.
“Don’t be funny. Tell me what you know.”
“Any chance you could put that gun down?”
The woman glared at him, then sighed. “I don’t suppose it would do much good against you, anyhow.” She holstered her weapon. “You’d just grab it with those rope thingies of yours.”
“They’re actually webs,” Spider-Man said. “Powered by science. Anyhow, let’s do this the polite way. I’m Spider-Man. And you are?”
“Lt. Yuri Watanabe,” she said in a clipped voice, “and I’m not looking for a new pal. You’re a person of interest in a murder investigation, and while bringing you to the precinct for questioning would present some challenges, putting out an APB on you would probably mess up your week. So how about you stop wasting my time?”
No nonsense, tough as nails, and willing to work with Spider-Man. He liked that—and it made him think. For years he’d wondered how much more he could get done if he had a direct relationship with the police department. His mind raced with the possibilities. The trick would be to prove his worth to her. That would involve a much lower percentage of wisecracks per sentence than what came naturally, but he was pretty sure—if he focused—he could get it done.