by Nick Svolos
I grinned, “Cool. Thanks, Harry. I’ll check in as soon as I have something. Can you shoot me over to their voicemail?” He did, and I left a brief message identifying myself, giving a brief description of the situation with the video and asked them to give me a call when convenient. That ought to buy me some time. I disconnected the call and passed the keyboard back to Herculene.
She logged out and closed the panel. “OK, our butts are appropriately covered. What’s next?”
“We go see if I can shake anything out of my contact,” I replied. I gave her the address of a bar on Rosecrans in Compton. The bar is not the sort of place any sane, law-abiding person should go to. The drinks are strong, cheap, and served in glasses that aren’t exactly what you’d describe as sanitary. That’s the good part. While the bar makes a good bit of money selling booze, the real business of the bar is in the buying and selling of violence. That’s the bad part. It’s a henchman bar. The owner, Rojelio “Mickey” Sanchez, used to be a henchman himself. Back in the Seventies, he worked for such notables as The Stone, Virus and Teuton. Unlike most henchmen, he survived his violent career, saved his money, stayed out of prison and retired from the Life about twenty years ago. He invested his savings in bar equipment and converted his old hideout into what is now known as The King of Spades. It serves as a sort of hiring hall for the kinds of people who are used to using muscle, blades or bullets to get a job done and the lack of morality required to not really care what that job is as long as the money’s good. Mickey got a cut of every deal made on the premises, which amounted to a tidy sum. He still worked the bar, but it was more to keep an eye on the place than out of a need to save money on staff. Word had it that he was rolling in money, which is probably why the place is still open. The cops usually shut down places like this as soon as they pop up. The fact that the place was still in operation after twenty years implied that Mickey’s money lined several important pockets.
Henching is an important service to the professional supervillain. While there is no shortage of super-powered bad guys that take delight in harming normal people, they are regarded as mad dogs and get put down pretty quick. In most jurisdictions, they can be killed without so much as a raised eyebrow. In the United States, a list of such villains is maintained by the FBI, and there are several super-types who make a considerable living collecting their bounties. These men and women, the bounty hunters, are extremely powerful and without remorse when it comes to killing these people.
The vast majority of supervillains, however, are content to stay alive to enjoy their ill-gotten gains. Let’s say you have super powers and decide you want to rob a bank. You’ll need to deal with a lot of normal people, bank employees and customers, security guards and what-not. If you use your powers on these people, you’ll get your name on the List. Odds are, you’ll be receiving a visit from The Stranger or whatever bounty hunter operates in your neck of the woods in the near future. If you manage to survive that encounter, the bounty on your head will grow and more will follow. Maybe you’re badass enough to handle all of that, but most super-types aren’t. It’s easier to rent a van and hire some henchmen. They handle the crowd-control work while you rip the vault open with your bare hands, dissolve it with acid spit or whatever your shtick is. If everything works out, you get away clean. As long as you’re following the rules, when some hero-type shows up to spoil your heist, he’s required to try to apprehend you. The hero knows that if he kills you, he’s probably going to be facing an inquest and possibly on the receiving end of excessive force charges. The worst you should get is beaten up and sent to Lompoc, where you’ll probably escape and get to try again.
It’s a crazy world we live in, but at least there are rules.
***
Herculene took surface streets to Compton and guided the big Lincoln through the morning commuter traffic with casual grace. As she drove, she asked me, “So, I told you my story. Time to balance accounts. How’d you end up doing what you do?”
“Well, I thought I was a drunk, but it turned out I was just a writer.”
She laughed, “Come on, Rube. You owe me.” She was smiling, but she wasn’t going to let me off the hook.
I raised my good hand in mock surrender, “OK, you win. I grew up in Santa Monica. Did the normal kid things, you know, school, cub scouts, stuff like that. Spent most of my time reading and helping my dad work on cars. I was a geeky, scrawny little guy, always getting picked on. I wasn’t any good at fighting, so I spent a lot of time running. When I got to junior high, I joined the track team. Figured I’d put all that running to use, and a lot of the kids on the team were bigger and that kind of helped put the kibosh on the bullying.
“Like I mentioned before, I started working at the Beacon as a copy boy. That’s an industry term for ‘minimum-wage gofer’. Got to know the business from the ground up and decided that’s what I was going to do. Before that, I wanted to be a private eye. I read pretty much everything Spillane and Hammett and those guys ever wrote. Watched every episode of The Rockford Files, and I totally wanted to be James Garner. You know, looking cool, chain-smoking, wearing sport coats, driving a badass Firebird, tangling with mobsters and a new hot dame every week.”
Herculene interrupted me with a giggle, “’Reuben Conway, Gumshoe.’ I love it!”
“Yeah, well, he got his ass kicked and thrown in jail every week, too, so reporting started to look like a pretty good alternative. I did two years at Santa Monica Community College and finished my degree up at UCLA. In my senior year, I wrote a story about kids and the stuff they go through when their powers manifest. A friend of mine had her abilities kick in while we were still freshmen in high school, so I was kind of inspired to explore the subject. I found an internet message board that dealt with people going through this and made a post introducing myself. I got some responses, so I went out and interviewed some of these kids and their parents. Not all of them were on the level, but enough were. Word got out about what I was doing, and soon I was getting calls from all over the country from kids trying to deal with stuff like what you went through. Turned out to be a hell of a story.”
“Holy crap, that was you? Dynamo showed me that piece when I started training with him. Oh my God, it was so awesome to know I wasn’t the only one!” She looked at me, a little embarrassed, “I had no idea it was you. That article helped me through a tough time. Thanks.”
“Wow, glad to have helped.” I could feel my face redden as I looked out the window. “Anyhow, the Beacon hired me straight out of college. I started out just doing normal reporting, rotating through the various departments and learning the ropes. The superpowers story kind of followed me, though, and the editors started sending similar leads my way. I just ran with it, and here I am.”
She smiled, “See, was that so hard? Now, let’s go find this bar of yours, I’ll buy you a drink.”
“Um, about that…you can’t go in.” She flashed me one of those “You and what army are gonna stop me?” looks, and I hurried to explain. “The King of Spades is a henchman bar. If you go in, there’s going to be a mess. Hell, if you’re even spotted in the neighborhood, they’ll clam up and probably kill me just to be thorough.”
She turned the wheel and started down a side street. She pulled over and stopped the car. Herculene turned to me, her face set in a hard glare. “And just when were you going to share this little piece of information with me?” she asked.
I decided to level with her. “I wasn’t. You’re not supposed to know about this place. The original plan was to give you the slip back in Wilmington, get over here on my own and get the information, and then use the Angelphone if I found something you can use.”
Her eyes flared angrily. “So, you were gonna ditch me. What changed your mind? The sniper? Or maybe you just needed me to get away from the cops.”
“Not at all. It was my car. Without you, I’d have gone back to my car like a sucker and probably be sitting in an interrogation room right now. You prevented me fr
om making a pretty big mistake. Look, I’m used to working alone, but maybe having someone to bounce my hare-brained schemes off seems like a good idea. There’s too much at stake. So, that’s when I scrapped the plan.”
I took a breath and went on. “Sure, I’d have never seen that sniper. If I somehow survived that, the cops might have caught me. But, if you want the bottom-line truth, I’m enjoying working with you. We seem to be building up a level of trust. I didn’t want to throw that away.” I’m not used to putting my cards out on the table like that, but I figured she deserved the truth.
The hard edge never left her eyes, but I could sense the conflict behind them as she weighed my words, the way I said them and probably a thousand other parameters I couldn’t comprehend. Eventually, she came to her decision, “Alright, assuming I don’t give in to common sense and drop-kick your butt back to Santa Monica for your own good and my mental health—and don’t think for a second I’m not seriously considering it—what’s your play?”
“The same as before, but without the whole ditching thing. I hoof it from here to the bar and you make yourself scarce for an hour or so. I do what I do and then call you when it’s done.”
“You remember that whole ‘hare-brained schemes’ thing? This is one of them. Look, tell me who this guy is and I’ll grab him, make him talk.”
It was my turn to shoot down her hare-brained scheme. “I’ll give you two reasons why that won’t work. Number one: This guy’s a pro. You aren’t going to hurt him, and he knows it. Even if you got some normals and turned them loose on him, he knows the limits of how far you’ll go. He’ll never talk. Number two: You’ll definitely get me killed. Maybe not today, but soon. Once word gets out that I rolled over on one of them, they’ll all come for me. They’ll have to. Most of them have talked to me at one point or another, and the rest will come along just out of general principles.”
She frowned, seeing my point. “I really don’t like this.”
“That makes two of us. Trust me on this. Sometimes, I know what I’m doing.”
She gave in. “OK, but I’m staying right here.” She looked at the map on the navigation panel. “I can be there in under thirty seconds. I’ll have your “Angelphone” re-routed directly to me. All you need to do is press the button. If your first words aren’t, ‘Everything’s just fine,’ I’ll be crashing through the front door and hitting things before you know it. Got that?” She was deadly serious. I thought about how many bullets you could pump into a nosy reporter in thirty seconds, but decided to keep that to myself.
“You bet. See? You’ve improved my plan a thousandfold. I’ll just have to be extra careful not to butt-dial. I just got this mental image of you busting through the wall like the Kool-Aid man, shouting, ‘Oh yeah!’” She chuckled at that. I placed my laptop and notebook back in my bag, slung it over my shoulder and said, “See you in bit.”
“One hour, Reuben,” she called out as I got out of the car. I waved and started walking the five blocks to the bar.
V
I stuck to the residential side street until I was a block away, then turned up to Rosecrans and Mickey’s bar. The King of Spades is a simple, white, windowless building with no adornments save a little placard with the bar’s name above a thick brown door. There’s a small parking lot but it’s almost always empty save for Mickey’s Mercedes, a spotless C-class with a sparkling, deep blue paint job and polished chrome wheels. None of the regulars park their cars there, at least not that I’ve seen. I crossed the street at the corner and went inside. The bar was cool and dark, and even at this time of the morning, there were a few patrons scattered throughout the place, rough-looking men with nowhere else to go. The night shift of costumed villainy, blowing off steam. The walls of the bar were covered in red velvet, the well-worn seats of the four booths opposite the bar were red as well, and the carpet was a red and black pattern, little red squares against a black background. There were a half dozen tables arranged in the middle of the floor, and another six stools at the bar. A large mirror ran the length of the wall behind the bar, over a shelf lined with various bottles of booze. In the back of the bar was a pair of restrooms, the emergency exit and a coin-operated pool table.
I intensely disliked going to the King of Spades, but it was one of my best sources of information. Not from Mickey, of course. Despite the fact that he probably knew more about the illicit activities of the city’s supervillain community than any man alive, the man knew how to keep his mouth shut. His clientele, however, were often more forthcoming when their tongues were loosened by Mickey’s strong drinks and the appropriate offer, usually cash. My going rate for information leading to a decent story was two-hundred bucks. My price of admission to this hive of scum and villainy was a pair of tickets to whatever team happened to be playing at that time of year. The Beacon gets more promotional tickets than it can use, and I always keep a supply on hand for just such an occasion. Mickey loved sports. I always suspected the real purpose for the bribe was to allow him to keep tabs on me and who I was talking to. From that, he could probably figure out what information I had likely received and if I ever went to the wrong people with said information, he’d be able to direct irate customers to correct my error in judgment. It kept me honest, if such a term can be said to apply to this sort of business, and I always dealt squarely with him and his patrons. When you work around these people, you’re working without a net.
Mickey was behind the bar, drying a glass. He’s a stocky gent, about five-eleven, and well into his sixties. His formerly black hair, having long since sailed past the salt-and-pepper stage and gone grey, was slicked back with what I suspected was Valvoline. He wore a clean, starched white shirt with the sleeves rolled up past the elbow and dark gabardine slacks, over which he wore a red apron. His weathered, olive-skinned face bore more than a couple of scars, his nose had been broken and poorly set a couple of times and he bore the wrinkles of a man his age. Though he had put on some weight over the years, you could see that the muscles of his younger days were still there and he moved in the way of a man who knew how to handle himself in a fight if he needed to.
His eyes were on me the instant I opened the door and sized me up within seconds. He waved me down to his end of the bar and went back to drying his glasses. “What can I get you, Mr. Conway?”
“Gimme a Coors,” I replied. Mickey’s not the kind of guy to sell microbrews. He reached behind the bar, pulled out a bottle, popped the cap and set it on the bar in front of me with a single, time-perfected motion. I took a long, frosty swallow and let it glide down my throat. After my five-block hike in the morning heat, it felt good. I set a five dollar bill on the bar and Mickey replaced it with two singles in another well-practiced feat of efficiency.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. Conway, you look like hell. I hear you got a hell of a story, though.” He wasn’t wrong about how I looked. In addition to the cast and sling, I had sweat through my shirt at least twice, and there were a few cuts and abrasions on my face from my adventures. I’m sure I didn’t smell all that good, either. Mickey, ever the soul of decorum, did not mention this.
“Thanks,” I replied dryly, “It was an interesting night.” I paused for a moment and added, “Has Reggie been in yet?” I dropped a pair of box seat tickets for tomorrow night’s game against the Giants in the tip jar, indicating the nature of my business by paying the rent up front.
“Not yet, but he usually comes in about this time.”
I thanked him and took my beer over to a booth towards the middle of the room where I could keep an eye on both doors. I pulled out my notebook and phone, the normal one, and turned it back on. I dialed into my voicemail and passed the time writing down the names and numbers of all the people I owed calls to. Most were from other news agencies, seeking interviews and a couple of them even wanted to put me on various news programs. A detective from the LAPD, a Lieutenant Dawson, wanted to speak with me, as did an FBI agent by the name of Wells. Both sounded ominous.<
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“Hey, there he is!” A deep, baritone voice interrupted my reverie. “Jesus, Conway, you look like hell.” Reggie Burns plopped down in the booth opposite me, setting down his own beer and a bowl of peanuts. Reggie was once a pro athlete. I think he played for the Eagles before the NFL threw him out for getting too rough with his girlfriend. He still had the build of a linebacker, although he had been out of football for about five years. These days, he thugged for Fist and worked as a bouncer at one of the clubs in Hollywood when he wasn’t henching. Looking at my arm, he added, “Sorry ‘bout your arm man. I had no idea it was gonna be like that.”
“No worries, man,” I replied in what amounts to a tough guy voice for me. “It’ll look good on camera.” When I work this bar, I play the part of the hack journalist, acting like my primary motivation was fame and money. It felt dirty, and sometimes I wondered if the character was less of an act than I told myself it was, but it was useful to present an image these guys could understand. I placed two hundred-dollar bills on the table and slid it towards him.
Reggie’s face broke into a wide grin as he pocketed the money. “That’s what I like about you, Conway. You always pay your bills.” He took a long sip from his beer and tossed a few peanuts into his mouth. “I don’t even have to go looking for you,” he said as he chewed. He said it in a light, conversational tone, but the implied threat was very real and very serious.
The conversation had just started and I already wanted it over with, but I was here for a reason, so I cut to the chase. I leaned forward and said in a low tone so only he could hear. “Look man, this story’s got legs. Could mean big things for me.” I put another pair of c-notes on the table and set my beer on them. “I need to know how you knew about this refinery thing.”
Reggie’s eyes went immediately to the money on the table, and he looked about the room, nervously. His greed got the better of him and he spoke, “OK, here’s how it went down. Last night, we was supposed to have a gig. Fist wanted to knock off an armored car downtown. I guess he got word that one of those big banks were moving something big, not just cash like they usually do. Bearer bonds, shit like that. So he calls us up and tells us to be ready. Only, about two hours before I was supposed to show up, he calls me and says the gig’s off! I mean, what the fuck am I supposed to do? I already called in sick to my straight job and I got bills to pay, you know? So, I make a few calls to see if I can scare up an alternative gig, but nothing’s going on. Shit’s dead out there. Anyhow, I get a call from this guy I know. He’s in the same boat. His straight job is working as a driver for one of those trucking companies that hauls slurry from the refinery. He says they shut the whole operation down for the night. Zero explanation given, just that they should stay the fuck away from the refinery.
