Action Figures - Issue Six: Power Play

by Michael Bailey

  “Hey. Look. Between you and me?” Stuart lowers his voice out of habit, even though the cafeteria is half empty and no one is sitting anywhere near us. “I’m with you. I think maybe we should come clean with our families.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. So does Missy. Things have been getting crazier and crazier for us, and it’s getting harder to keep it quiet, you know? Feels like it’s only a matter of time before it all comes out anyway.”

  “So why not get ahead of it and get the truth out on our terms,” I conclude.

  “Exactly.”

  “How come you can see that but Matt can’t?”

  “Because I’m way smarter than him,” he jokes, and then he gets serious. “Honestly? I don’t care what my parents think of me. Things have been off between us ever since Jeff died so, way I look at it, their opinion of me can’t get any worse.”

  “That’s kind of pessimistic, don’t you think?”

  He shrugs: whatever. “But I think that’s why Matt’s so squirrelly about saying anything to his parents. Matt and his mom have always been solid, and he and his Dad are finally starting to get along again. Dude’s probably scared he’ll screw all that up if he tells them about our side business.”

  Or, like Carrie, he’s scared they’ll try to take it away from him, and being a super-hero means more to Matt than almost anything. He’s literally living his childhood dream. I know I’d be devastated if I lost something that important to me.

  “I’m not going to apologize for the guy. What he said to you this morning was not cool, at all,” Stuart says, “but I get where he’s coming from.”

  “Yeah. I do too,” I admit, “but he has to accept that this is going to happen, with or without him.”

  “I know. I wouldn’t worry.”

  “No?”

  “Nah. We both know always comes around. Give him time. He’ll pull his head out of his ass and see the light.”

  I smile. “He will, won’t he?”

  “Course he will. Dude’s predictable.”

  ***

  He is. He really is.

  We gather at my locker after the final bell, not so much eager to get to the weekend as we are relieved. Personally, all I want to do for the next two days is sleep. Matt is the last to join us. He slips into the group with a distant, pensive, mildly embarrassed expression I’ve come to know well. Good afternoon, Apologetic Matt Steiger.

  “Can I talk to you?” he says.

  “Go ahead,” I say, crossing my arms and leaning back against my locker. Nope, not going to make it easy on him.

  “Privately?”

  “Nope.”

  “Nuh-uh,” Missy says.

  “Sorry, dude,” Stuart says. “Walk of shame time.”

  Matt sighs. “I’m sorry for this morning. That was a crappy thing for me to say.”

  “Yes it was,” I say.

  “But I haven’t changed my mind. I don’t think we should tell our parents about the Hero Squad.”

  “They’re going to find out, Matt. Christina’s going to tell them if you don’t.”

  “WHY?!” Matt explodes. “Why does she have to tell them anything? It’s none of her business! This is my life! Where does she get off going to my parents behind my back?”

  I give him a ten count to cool down.

  “Matt. When I told Christina what happened to Carrie, she was devastated. It destroyed her. It blindsided her. It was a terrible, awful, craptacular way to find out about her only daughter. If, God forbid, you were killed in action, is that how you’d want your parents to find out the truth about you?”

  “You think knowing my secret identity would make it hurt less for them?”

  “No. I don’t. But right now, they’re sharing the risk of your decision to live this life and they don’t know it. That’s not fair to them.”

  “I’m telling my parents,” Stuart says. “We might not be on great terms and all, but I can’t do that to them.”

  “I get that it’s scary,” Missy says. “I mean, Mom’s going to go mental when she finds out, and when she finds out Dad knew the whole time, and God, her brains are going to squirt out of her ears when I tell her I’m Dad’s crazy science project, but she’s my mom and she loves me. That’s not going to change.”

  It’s three against one — not that it matters because Matt has never been susceptible to peer pressure. He has, however, developed a vulnerability to sound reasoning — and, like Stuart said, he always comes around and does the right thing in the end.

  “Okay,” he says. “Let’s do it.”

  EIGHT

  WERE U AT

  Mick Danner grumbles and texts his reply: still on gd bus.

  The bus lurches into motion, but it doesn’t last. Morning rush hour is done and over, but the streets remain jammed thanks to scattered little road repair projects that should have wrapped up weeks ago. It’s getting too damn cold for the grunts to be tearing up asphalt for anything that isn’t a major emergency.

  The bus crawls past a small work crew — three men in orange safety vests and a cop directing traffic — and Mick shakes his head in sympathy. What a life. Waking up at the crack of dawn, spending a ten-hour day alternating between too hot (got to take off a layer) and too cold (where the hell did I put my jacket?), eating nothing but a meager sandwich brought from home, doing your business in a porta-potty that hasn’t been cleaned since the Reagan administration — miserable way to earn a living.

  And yet, considering what lies ahead for him, Mick would take it all back in a hot second. Better a construction crew than a highway cleanup detail. Do they still have those? Mick wonders, though he’s not at all eager to learn the answer.

  Twenty-five years. That’s the possible maximum sentence according to Mick’s public defender, but he thinks he might be able to talk the court down to ten. Mick has a few points in his favor, namely the fact his criminal record is relatively mild — a drunk driving charge that cost him his license; a couple of disorderly conduct incidents, both dismissed; and one assault and battery, also dismissed, stemming from a barroom brawl he didn’t start. On the other hand, he and his buddies robbed a credit union while armed. Sure, the weapons in question were utterly ridiculous things they cobbled together in Delroy’s basement, but they were enough to qualify their crime as a federal offense.

  The whole thing was ridiculous, looking back on it. Mick thought Delroy was joking when he proposed forming a super-villain team. It was the sort of wild fantasy he’d dream up a dozen times a day and pitch to the gang. Let’s form a band and play local clubs. Let’s brew our own beer, and then we can make a fortune on the craft brew market like that Sam Adams guy. Let’s sit down and figure out which lottery numbers come up the most often and play those until we hit the jackpot. Delroy specialized in generating great ideas they weren’t smart enough to turn into reality.

  But they were smart enough to make the weapons. They looked cool and, more importantly, they worked.

  The problem was they weren’t smart enough to stop there and let the super-villain team idea die like the rest of Delroy’s pipe dreams. The weapons functioned as anticipated, and that one small success galvanized them. They cobbled together crude uniforms, adopted code names, and planned their first heist. Delroy, the de facto brains of the outfit, insisted they keep the job simple: hit the Kingsport Credit Union mid-afternoon when things would be slow, flash their weapons to scare the employees, and take the money and run. It should have worked beautifully.

  But Delroy, whose criminal experience was on par with Mick’s, made several assumptions that proved their undoing. Delroy had always heard that as long as the tellers left one bill at the bottom of their drawers they wouldn’t trigger a silent alarm. He was wrong on that one, which meant he was also wrong on their chances of getting in and out without police interference. He never bothered to account for the possibility of a cruiser being in the immediate vicinity because What are the chances of that happening? And he certainly never co
nsidered the possibility of any of the local super-hero population showing up. They were small potatoes, he reasoned, the kind of petty criminal big boys like Concorde wouldn’t bother with.

  Mick remembers the rush that coursed through him when he spotted the glowing girl, Lightsomething, swooping in on them. Seconds earlier his buddy Van had laid out a cop with a short burst of gunfire and was high on adrenaline. He opened fire on Lightwhatever without hesitation — and without effect. The girl deflected the attack and responded with one of her own, an attack that sent Van flying and, they later learned, cracked his sternum. The rest of the crew fell as quickly, taken down by the glowing girl’s teammates with embarrassing ease. Mick took a flying knee to the chest from the kid in the trench coat and that was that.

  The bus rolls to a stop with a squeal of under-maintained brakes. Mick steps off and begins the short walk to Delroy’s place. This will be the first time since that disastrous day they’ll all be in the same room, Mick realizes. Their respective attorneys advised them against gathering or even speaking to one another until after the trial. Why Delroy would tempt fate like this...

  Mick turns a corner and Delroy’s house slides into view, a pristine white and meticulously maintained one-story deal settled in amidst a collection of dreary and dilapidated suburban homes. Delroy inherited his place from his father, and he vowed to keep it up as well as his dad did, almost as an act of defiance against the decay creeping through and consuming the neighborhood one house at a time.

  The black sedan in the driveway tucked in behind Delroy’s old Toyota is, like the house itself, strikingly incongruous in a block filled with beaters and rust buckets. The sedan bears a Massachusetts license plate with the unlikely number of 000. A vanity plate, he assumes, but he doesn’t get the joke.

  “You coming in or what?” Delroy says from the porch. He takes a swig of coffee and leans against the doorframe.

  Mick jerks a thumb at the sedan. “This yours?”

  “Yeah. Bought it yesterday with all that extra money I got lying around.”

  Delroy doesn’t offer a handshake as Mick enters the home, squeezing past Delroy’s thick, muscular frame. He might actually be larger than when they last saw one another. Makes sense, Mick thinks. Delroy always liked to spend his spare time working on the house or pumping iron, and now that he’s unemployed — after his arrest, he was quietly and unceremoniously let go from his under-the-table construction job — he has ample time to kill until the trial.

  Mick steps into the living room, nearly colliding with an unfamiliar man dressed in a black suit that looks like it cost as much as the car outside. The man glances at an equally expensive watch and frowns disapprovingly.

  “You’re late,” he says, “but I understand from Mr. Nolte the local public transit system was living down to its reputation.”

  “Who the hell’re you?” Mick demands.

  “If you’ll kindly take a seat, I’ll gladly explain everything.”

  “Guy wouldn’t say jack to us until you got here,” Jonas says from the couch.

  “Well, he wouldn’t say jack to us,” Van says. “Apparently he already gave Delroy his sales pitch — what with him being our leader and all,” he adds with a small sneer.

  “Ain’t my fault this dude came to me first,” Delroy says. “And get your feet off my coffee table before I break them off.”

  Van, with a sigh, does as told.

  “What’re you doing out anyway?” Mick asks. “Last I heard you were still being held on bail.”

  Van shrugs. “Mom decided I’d learned my lesson and sprang me. Wasn’t easy, but her lawyer is slick.” He laughs. “Should be, considering how much he costs.”

  “And how much of the family fortune did she spend on you this time, Mr. Van Zandt?” the suit inquires. “Six figures? Seven? I’d say I’m surprised she didn’t let you rot in jail for once, but she’s never been able to resist your sob stories, has she? Poor woman. She truly believes this will be the day you finally turn your life around, doesn’t she?”

  Van’s eyes darken. “You shut your damned mouth!” he says, jumping to his feet. “You don’t know jack about me!”

  “I know everything important about you, Mr. Van Zandt — and believe me, that isn’t much. Now, if you’ll take your seat?”

  Delroy waves Van down. He sits, reluctantly.

  “My name is John Nemo,” the man says, “and I represent an organization that is interested in individuals such as yourselves — people possessed of a certain temperament who might prove valuable to us.”

  “Yeah? What makes us so interesting?” Mick says.

  “You came to our attention a few months ago, after your first outing as super-villains. It wasn’t a triumphant debut, true, but we appreciated your initiative — and, as luck would have it, we are in the market for people with initiative.”

  “Doing what, exactly?” Jonas says.

  “My organization is prepared to provide you with equipment that would allow you to more actively and, in theory, more successfully pursue your burgeoning career as super-villains.”

  “You’re going to give us equipment? Just like that?” Mick says.

  Nemo holds up a finger. “These resources would remain available to you on a trial basis. What you do with our equipment is up to you. Rob banks, seek revenge against those who have wronged you, sow chaos in general — as you please. The only stipulation is that you conduct your business here in Kingsport.”

  “In the Protectorate’s backyard? You serious?”

  “Completely.”

  “What’re we supposed to do if they try to stop us?”

  “Fight back. You’ll have the means to do so — and the advantage of facing the Protectorate and their junior colleagues while they’re injured, exhausted, and stretched thin. Consider it part of your audition. We intend to keep track of your activities to see how you perform. Should you fail to impress us, we’d reclaim our property and part ways.”

  “And if we impress you?” Van says.

  “Then we’d take you on as operatives. You’d cease your freelance criminal activities and work for us exclusively. You’d accept assignments of varying natures, and in return you’d all receive reasonable stipends — that means a paycheck,” Nemo says, spotting the uncomprehending frown on Van’s face. “You’d also benefit from various protections and perks, such as making your current legal woes go away.”

  At that, the men hold themselves a little straighter. “For real?” Mick says. “You have that kind of pull?”

  “We do indeed have that kind of ‘pull,’ but that doesn’t mean we can and will step in every time you stumble in the course of performing your duties. If we feel you’re becoming a liability, we’d cut you loose without hesitation.”

  “You would, huh?” Van says.

  “Absolutely. And please notice I’m being completely honest about that. We believe in transparency.”

  “There it is, guys,” Delroy says. “I don’t know about y’all, but I think it’s a pretty sweet deal.”

  “Money, protection, and we’d get to do whatever the hell we wanted?” Van says with a grin. “Sign us up.”

  “Now, hold on a sec,” Mick says, “let’s at least talk this out. There’s got to be some kind of catch.”

  “I’ve laid out all the particulars, Mr. Danner,” Nemo says, “including all the catches. We have no interest in setting you up to fail. Quite the contrary.”

  Skeptical nevertheless, Jonas interrogates Nemo at length, pressing him for details about the assignments they might receive as operatives, who they’d report to, how much freedom they’d have to pursue side jobs, how they might terminate their employment with Nemo’s organization, should they choose to...

  “And what about your organization?” Jonas asks. “What’s their deal?”

  “That, Mr. Brolin, is one topic I’m not at liberty to discuss in detail,” Nemo says. “Don’t expect to ever meet my employer in person — or, for that matter, anyone in t
he hierarchy besides me. In fact, be thankful if you never meet anyone else high on the chain of command. If you ever come face-to-face with someone at the top, that almost certainly means you’ve committed an unforgiveable mistake.”

  Nemo grants them a minute to consider the offer, to ask any more questions.

  “What the hell?” Jonas says. “Not like I have anything better to look forward to.”

  “What do you say, Mick?” Delroy says. “You on board or what?”

  The way his lawyer tells it, Mick will get to enjoy one last Christmas and New Year’s Eve as a free man. After that, he won’t see a holiday outside of a prison cell until his forties — and that’s only if he manages to plead out in exchange for a reduced sentence.

  His daughter would be a grown woman by that point, perhaps on her way to having a child of her own.

  “Let’s do it,” Mick says.

  ***

  Delroy glances at the business card again, then back up at the shop window. SMITH PAWN & LOANS, the window proclaims.

  “This is the place on the card,” he says, doubt lingering in his mind despite his repeated comparisons of the card to the window.

  “What are we supposed to get here? A bunch of old electric guitars?” Van says. “This has to be the wrong place.”

  “This is the place on the card.”

  “Has to be the wrong place.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Mick says.

  They hesitate one minute more, as if expecting a sign from on high verifying they are indeed in the right place. None appears.

  They head inside.

  An elderly man glances up from his newspaper. “Gentlemen,” he says without warmth or interest. “What can I help you with?”

  They look around, unsure of exactly what they’re looking for. A line of battered Stratocasters, naked of their strings, hangs on the wall behind the clerk. Gold and silver jewelry, along with many pieces pretending to be gold and silver, glitters dully from within a glass display case that doubles as a counter. A table near the entrance plays host to an assortment of rusted power tools, all of which are FIFTY PRECENT OFF! ALL SALE’S FINAL according to a handwritten sign.