Action Figures - Issue Six: Power Play

by Michael Bailey

  Normal is good.

  ***

  “Hello again, gentlemen,” Drummond says. “What can I help you with today?”

  Concorde, smiling inside his helmet, hands his precious document over. “This is a search warrant that authorizes my colleague here,” he says, nodding toward Mindforce, “to conduct a full telepathic scan on one Mister Johnstone Van Zandt. We’ve already contacted Mr. Van Zandt’s attorney to notify him of our intent. He should be here soon so he can sit in on the session. If you’ll be so kind as to make Mr. Van Zandt available?”

  Drummond gives the warrant a cursory once-over. “Van Zandt’s attorney got here fifteen minutes ago. He’s meeting with his man now,” he says, handing the warrant back. “So you’re Edison Bose, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  “And who are you?” Drummond asks Mindforce.

  “Some guy in a funny costume,” Mindforce says.

  Drummond grunts. “Be right back.”

  “I must admit, I expected people to make a bigger deal of your grand reveal,” Mindforce says.

  “You obviously haven’t been watching the news lately.”

  “I have not.”

  “Not too late to jump on the bandwagon. Half the New England HeroNet has gone public. Figure in the Quentins and the Squad and that brings it up to seventy-five percent. You, Nina, and the Entity are among the few holdouts.”

  “And so I shall remain. Your business might not be adversely impacted by having a public identity but mine might. I doubt my patients would feel terribly comfortable knowing their therapist could read their minds.”

  “But you wouldn’t.”

  “No, but a successful doctor-patient relationship is built on trust. As cruelly ironic as it is, complete honesty in this case would compromise that trust.”

  “Mm. Guess I was hoping for a little company on my new path, is all.”

  “You have plenty of company. If the media’s to be believed, nearly half of the super-heroes in the country are following your lead. Before too much longer I’ll be the exception rather than the rule. Here comes the lawyer.”

  “Gentlemen, hello. Angie Sears, I represent Mr. Van Zandt,” she says, extending a hand. “Nice to meet you Mindforce, Concorde...or is it Mr. Bose?”

  “When I’m in the suit it’s Concorde, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course. I understand you gentlemen have a search warrant? May I see it?” Concorde hands it over. Sears takes her time reading it, out of spite if not out of any sense of professionalism. “Looks in order. Shame you wasted your time.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve convinced my client to cooperate with you.”

  “And in exchange he wants...?”

  “All standing charges dropped. And before you fight me on that, I’ve already spoken to the DA and he’s on board. The DA is a close personal friend of the Van Zandts and understands that letting a little fish like my client go in exchange for a big fish such as an illicit arms dealers is a more than fair tradeoff.”

  “Maybe you missed the part about us having a search warrant, Ms. Sears,” Concorde says. “We don’t need your deal.”

  “And we don’t need your permission to accept the DA’s generous offer, which is what’s on the table. Your search warrant is effectively invalid.”

  Concorde’s hands ball into fists of impotent rage.

  “If it eases your mind, Concorde, the deal is null and void if it proves useless. If you don’t find this alleged weapons workshop exactly where Mr. Van Zandt says it is, my client stays right where he is. I trust you find this fair?”

  “Barely,” Concorde says.

  Sears reaches into a pocket and presents a folded piece of notebook paper. “Let me know how things work out.”

  “And that is?”

  “The address of the workshop where Mr. Van Zandt and his colleagues acquired their weaponry. No, sorry, he didn’t call it a workshop,” Sears says. “He called it ‘the most bad-ass armory I’ve ever seen in my life.’ ”

  ***

  Thanks to my lack of familiarity with the MBTA, I get on the wrong train not once but twice, which means I show up to lunch twenty minutes late. But that’s okay because Meg got caught in traffic on the Pike, so I still beat her by ten minutes.

  Our restaurant is a small brewpub frequented by Berklee students. For obvious reasons Meg hasn’t sampled any of the beer, but the food is excellent and college student-friendly, cost-wise. We mutually agree to hold off on exchanging gifts until we get back to her dorm room.

  “I have something for you I don’t think you want other people seeing,” I say, which causes Meg to smile wickedly. “Nothing like that.”

  “Aww,” she pouts. Stop that, you tease. “That’s okay, I have something for you that you might not want to show off in front of strangers. Also nothing like that.”

  After lunch we stop at a Starbucks for coffee to go then head back to Meg’s place. My gift sits on her bed, wrapped up in festive red and green striped paper and tied up with white ribbon and a big floopy bow.

  “My presents aren’t as pretty,” I say. “I’m all thumbs when it comes to wrapping gifts.”

  “Then I won’t feel bad when I shred the wrapping paper like a crazed badger,” Meg says.

  We sit on the bed. I insist on going first. “This is from all of us. The Squad, I mean,” I say, pulling the first gift out of my backpack.

  “Aww, Christmas penguins,” Meg says, noting the wrapping paper. “Now I will feel bad about opening it.”

  That doesn’t stop her from shredding the paper all badger-like. She pries the box open and removes the contents. Meg is a big fan of skirts, so I made sure the tunic was cut long to create a skirt effect, almost like a minidress. The tights, like the tunic, are a pale electric blue accented in white and yellow. The fabric is a durable polymer that form-fits like Spandex, is as soft as silk, and protects like Kevlar — another fine Bose Industries product.

  Meg bites her lower lip, which she tends to do when she gets excited. It’s adorable. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “If you think it’s your own official super-hero outfit, then yes,” I say. “I remember you bemoaning the fact you never had proper super-hero garb, so...”

  “This. Is. Awesome,” she says, hugging the uniform to her chest. “And, bonus, it’ll make Kilroy soooooooo jealous.”

  Time for present number two out. This one, I tell her, is from me and me alone. Meg pulls the paper off to reveal one of those retro portable record players and three albums — Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Aretha Franklin. Not reissues, mind you, but originals. None of the jackets are in mint condition, but the albums themselves are undamaged.

  “I always thought it was funny someone who loves vintage clothing and old-school jazz and blues downloaded all her music,” I say, “so I thought you might enjoy listening to it the way it was meant to be heard.”

  “This is so cool,” Meg says with a big sappy smile that turns to jaw-dropping amazement when she takes a closer look at the Aretha Franklin album, a copy of I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You bearing the Queen of Soul’s autograph. “Oh my God,” she whispers.

  “Found it on eBay,” I say, omitting the fact I got it for a great price because of the jacket’s poor condition, but hey, it’s autographed.

  She blinks away a tear. “Oh, Sara,” she says. “Thank you, sweetie.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Meg unpacks the record player, plugs it in, and baptizes it with the Aretha album. The strains of “Respect” drift from the built-in speaker, the tones warm and round and charmingly lo-fi. Meg grins.

  “Fantastic,” she says. “Okay. Your turn.”

  Meg returns to the bed and hands me my gift, which is remarkably similar in size and shape as the box holding Meg’s uniform. Unlike her, I am ridiculously dainty about opening presents. Meg shreds; I peel apart at the seams.

  “So ladylike,” she teases.

  After the paper comes
off, I open the box and lift out the contents, a length of black fabric with intricate beading at the top and tassels around hem of —

  Oh.

  I remember this dress. I saw it in a vintage clothing store Meg took us to once. I actually dared to try it on. Meg said I looked fantastic in it. It was the first time she told me — that anyone told me I looked beautiful.

  “You get to keep that on one condition: you wear that on New Year’s Eve,” Meg says. “My band is playing a gig that night. We’ll be done by ten and we’ve been invited to stay for the rest of the party.” She takes my hands and says with great mock seriousness, “Will you be my plus-one?”

  “Always,” I say in something between a laugh and a sob. Nuts, now I’m crying. Well done, Meg. You got me back good.

  “I love you, Strawberry. Merry Christmas and happy Hanukkah.”

  “Merry Christmas, Sparky. I love you too.”

  She leans in to kiss me. I close my eyes and wait for the feel of her lips on mine...and then her stupid phone goes off and totally kills the moment.

  Meg sputters. “Timing,” she says.

  “Crappy timing.”

  She glances at her phone. “It’s Edison.”

  “Calling you? That’s unusual.”

  “Yeah it is.” And that may be the only reason why she answers. “Hey, what’s up? What? Uh, yeah, sure, if you need me. Do you know when? Okay, well, keep me in the loop. Bye.”

  “What was that about?”

  “Looks like I might get to break in my new super-duds sooner than I expected,” Meg says. “I’ve been recruited for a raid.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Listen up, people,” Edison says, calling the meeting to order.

  It’s another full house in the Protectorate conference room, plus we have the Quantums attending via Skype — Meg from her dorm and the rest of the family from the Quantum Compound. Tisha is also in on the meeting to provide her technical expertise.

  Edison pokes at his tablet, bringing up on the main screen security camera footage from the Kingsport Credit Union. Damage Inc. charges in, weapons at the ready. The Riveter cuts loose with a brief spray of gunfire into the ceiling that causes customers and tellers alike to flatten on the floor.

  “On June 3 of this year, four men robbed the Kingsport Credit Union on Main Street,” Edison begins. “As you can see, they were dressed as construction workers and armed with power tool-inspired weaponry.” He pokes the tablet again and brings up different footage — different, but remarkably similar. “Last Friday, four men executed a nearly identical robbery of the same bank. Thanks to Sara’s intervention, the police were able to apprehend one of the suspects in the Friday robbery.”

  Meg slips me a proud smile.

  Edison next brings up a police mug shot labeled VAN ZANDT, JOHNSTONE J. “This is him: Johnstone ‘Van’ Van Zandt. He was also one of the men arrested following the June robbery. We have every reason to believe these two gangs are the same group — yet the gang that hit the bank last week was packing some high-tech heat rather than the homemade junker weapons you saw in the first video.”

  “Mr. Van Zandt has informed us that he and his friends acquired their new gear from a black market weaponsmith operating in South Boston,” Bart says. “What’s worth noting, and what you can’t see in the footage, is that this weaponsmith also provided Damage Inc. with helmets equipped with telepathic bafflers.”

  “That’s some serious cutting-edge tech,” Tisha remarks, one part impressed and one part concerned.

  “Tech we’ve encountered on precious few occasions,” Edison says. “The last time was about a year ago, when we broke up a secret organization operating just outside Boston. That organization was the point of origin for the Thrashers — which, as we all know, made an appearance earlier this month.”

  “That’s a hell of a full circle,” Natalie says. “Can’t be coincidence.”

  “Agreed. All the evidence suggests this organization is back in operation.”

  “Or never went out of business to begin with,” Matt says. “It probably went underground to regroup.”

  “Point is: it’s alive and well and apparently arming criminals.”

  “But why?” Dr. Quentin says. “What’s the point of providing such expensive technology to third-raters like Damage Inc.?”

  “That’s what I want to know — which is why we’re going take down the person who supplied them.”

  Edison lays out the plan. Thanks to Van Zandt, we know where the armory is, and we have a general idea of its layout and what to expect when we bust in. What’s more uncertain is how much resistance we might meet. Are the people there simply tech monkeys, or do they know how to fight? If they’re combat-trained, they could turn a warehouse full of exotic weaponry into a kill box.

  “That’s why we’re going to run extensive recon on this place first,” Edison says. “I’m giving everyone through New Year’s Day to rest up and get ready. After that, we move.”

  ***

  And by we Edison meant everyone but me.

  After the meeting Edison informed me, to my frustration, that he planned to keep me on injured reserve until further notice, and I might not be called up for surveillance duty. Consciously, I know it’s the right call; I have a long way to go before I’m fully healed up. That doesn’t mean I’m happy at the prospect of getting left behind.

  Rather than dwell on that, I keep myself occupied with New Year’s Eve planning. I was braced for Christina to shoot down my request to go out, which would be an entirely reasonable response. Few responsible parents, foster or otherwise, would allow their sixteen-year-old to attend a decidedly adult New Year’s Eve party in the city with her college student girlfriend. However, Christina has some offenses to atone for, so she’s letting me go under the strict condition that once the ball drops and it’s officially next year, Meg brings me right home. No lingering, no partying to the wee hours; the clock strikes twelve and the ball is over for me, no arguments. I agree, gladly and gratefully.

  By the time December 31 rolls around, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. I have the dress, I found some nice shoes for cheap at Payless, and I was able to channel my inner Martha Stewart successfully enough to put together a Twenties-era feather fascinator for my hair — and I only burned myself with the hot glue gun once.

  The one thing I can’t work around with complete success is the big square of gauze taped to my shoulder. I have a black shawl that can cover it up as long as I drape it right, but I won’t be able to hold it up while I eat or dance. Dammit. I manage to put together such a great ensemble, all by myself, and all anyone will see will be this stupid bandage.

  I don’t know how Natalie does it. She posted a mirror selfie of her New Year’s Eve outfit, a tight little black strapless number, and I can clearly see every exposed scar, from the collection of pale lines crisscrossing her forearm — the results of a knife attack — to the faded reddish line on her shoulder from where she got shot once. She’s not embarrassed by her war wounds; she’s proud of them. She treats them like her greatest fashion accessory.

  On the other hand, if anyone asks me what happened I can tell them I got injured fighting a bunch of bank robbers. That’ll impress people, right?

  I start getting ready at four. An hour later I’m ready to go, and if I do say so myself, I look pretty fabulous. Christina agrees. I head downstairs so she can give me a ride to the train, and she spends a couple minutes admiring my ensemble — and maybe envying the fact I have plans for New Year’s that don’t involve sitting at home with a significant other I’m still pissed at.

  At the train station, Christina hugs me, tells me to have fun, and reminds me to come right home after midnight. I promise I will. Guilt may be driving her decision to let me go in the first place, but I’m not going to abuse it. All that would do is set our relationship back yet again, and I’m sick of losing precious ground there. No more backsliding. Always move forward. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…
<
br />   Meg meets me at South Station, saxophone case in hand, to ensure I don’t get lost on the T (again). She asks for a peek at my outfit, but I keep my long winter coat closed. She’s getting a proper unveiling at dinner — which is at the restaurant in the hotel where she and her band will be playing. It’s a fancy, upscale place that serves ridiculously small portions at outrageously high prices. The cost of a single glass of wine would pay for an entire meal at a Friendly’s. It’s the kind of place we’d never normally eat at, but this is a special occasion, in so many ways. We’re celebrating us as a couple. We’re celebrating surviving another year, and a particularly crappy one at that. We’re celebrating the end of said crappy year. We’re celebrating the dozens upon dozens of tiny little victories scored by us and by our friends: Meg graduating from high school and starting college, Farley starting kindergarten, Matt learning how to get past his doomed lifelong crush on me and moving on to find happiness with a new girl, Stuart finding a place to belong with the youth club, and Missy finding a place to belong with the high school stage band.

  This time next year, I dearly hope I’m celebrating Carrie’s return home.

  The restaurant has a coatroom with full coat check service, further impressing upon me how fancy it is. Meg shrugs out of her ankle-length coat. She’s wearing a mermaid gown with a deep plunging neckline. There’s a hint of sparkle in the flowing black fabric. Her finishing accessory of choice is a black choker with an old ivory cameo in the center. Her hair is done in a loose up-do. She looks amazing.

  Judging by the look on her face, she feels the same way about me in my fancy party ensemble. “Ohhh, baby,” she coos, giving me a long, lingering once-over. My cheeks burn.

  The maître d’ leads us to our table. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a few people staring at us. Can’t blame them; I’d check us out too.

  Our table setting is intimidating. I count three separate forks, two knives, two spoons, and three different glasses. The menu is equally imposing but for much different reasons. I can’t pronounce half the entrees and they use endive in everything and my God, how can people afford to eat here?