The Good Fight 2: Villains Read online

  “What are you doing?” Spinach mumbled, “Those are my accounts.”

  “Well yeah,” I said with an eye roll. “I’m transferring your personal savings into an account my employer can draw from.”

  I reached the password stage of the process. His password was needed to authorize the transaction. This meant it was show time. My favorite part.

  I spun the stockbroker to face me. Then I dramatically pulled an envelope out from under my shirt. At least I thought it looked dramatic when I practiced it in the mirror earlier. With a single swipe I slit the envelope open. I know that move looked good, because the client flinched at the sound of the paper tearing. Despite my professionalism, I grinned. It was nice to be appreciated for my work.

  Unfolding the paper inside produced a satisfying crinkly noise. I pointed the printed side at the client, and pointed to the name at the bottom. Leslie Burke.

  Mr. Spinach looked backed at me, clueless.

  I read the letter to him. “You monster. You cheated my husband and me out of everything. Our life savings is gone. We worked hard to get ahead. Twenty years of real work, not the crap you pretend to do. You insisted you had no control over the collapse in the market, but you also told us to trust you. That you were an expert. We lost our home damn you! We have nothing! In fact we have less than nothing, because the god-forsaken banks charge us fees for having nothing. My daughter doesn’t have clothes for school. Our car was repossessed. But you? Somehow you did well. You got to keep your job. You got a promotion. You got bailed out with the taxes I had to pay year after year! Well now it’s your turn to suffer. You’re going to fix what you did. You’re going to feel the humiliation we had to go through. You’re going to learn what it’s like to have nothing. I had no idea I could hate someone as much as I do you, but I do. Before this, we were good people. We had good lives, and you’re going to give that back to us. You? I have no idea what slimy stone you crawled out from under, but you’d better go find it again, because that’s all you’re going to have left.”

  I folded the paper up and put it back in the envelope as the client’s eyes widened so far I thought they were going to pop out like a cartoon.

  “By the way? That last sentence was mine. I suggested adding it, and she liked it. I thought it was a good touch. Now. You are going to type in your password. Then we can get this over with. I’ll be on my merry way, and you can begin a life of poor misery, but it will be a life. You will get to live. Sound good?”

  His headed nodded yes, but his mouth opposed. “No. I can’t. That account will be traced. She won’t get the money. They’ll audit it and take it back. They’ll subpoena her accounts and she’ll go to jail. This won’t help anyone.”

  I raised an eyebrow. I, for one, think I do a good eyebrow raise. “Oh? That’s been taken care of. This is a Cayman account set up by a friend of mine. All off shore. Laundering all set up. So no worries. Thanks for the concern though. Now type.”

  He closed his hands into fists. “No. I won’t do this. I’ll be ruined. You... You might as well kill me. I’ll be as good as dead anyway!”

  I did my best sigh. All my sighs are good. I do them a lot, but this one is the full shoulders back, head back, eye roll to the moon. I save it for occasions such as these.

  He babbled on, becoming bolder and more certain in his defiance. I unwound some rubber tubing from another belt pouch. My new arm betrayed me again. Another piece of tubing crammed in the same pouch fell out. I didn’t think he saw the fumble and I didn’t draw attention to it by picking it up. He shot out another flurry of babble as I fastened the tubing into a tight tourniquet. I’d paid attention to which arm he’d favored when typing, so that was the arm I worked on. I tied the tubing so tight the rubber squealed in protest.

  “What are you doing to me? Is it torture? It’s torture isn’t it! You can torture me all you want, but I’m not going to talk!” He must have thought he sounded convincing.

  “You know? I think I believe you, Mr. Spinach, sir.” Putting my knife in my left hand, I held my right wrist under the lamp. Between it and computer glare my thick stitches were clearly visible. In fact, I had stitches all over, the crude kind of sutures that make me look like a badly repaired stuffed animal when I take off my shirt. As ugly as they are, few people notice them until I point them out. I find that people blot out things they don’t want to see.

  “No. No. You aren’t going to talk.” The knife flicked over and over as I cut stitch after stitch. “But I don’t need you to talk.”

  The hand was freed, but it had been in place for a while, enough to be a little firmly attached. I put the knife down, got a good grip, and wrenched it off with a loud snap. Black tendrils that looked like melted cheese connected the separated pieces. I cut them with the knife. More like touched them. As soon as the metal contacted the black goo, it snapped back into the stump of my arm. I set the hand on the desk. Bits of goo throbbed it its stump as well.

  The client recoiled and struggled to get away. All it did was create a squeaky sound in the chair that I wanted to giggle at, but didn’t. I let him struggle a bit until he accepted the futility of it. His nose was now running and despite a few whimpers was sufficiently horrified into silence. But I wasn’t finished.

  “Pretty freaky huh? But that’s not the cool part. Watch this.” The hand twitched on command. Fingers flexed and wiggled. Until the black goo within it died, I had some control over the disconnected piece. The range wasn’t great. The control wasn’t perfect either, and was worse with newer parts, but a twitch? Easy. Also? Impressive.

  “You see Spinach? I’m a monster. Just like you. But I’m a monster that hunts monsters, and I get paid well to do this. While you, on the other hand . . .” I paused for the pun, no reaction. “. . .are the kind of monster that hunts and preys on the weak. The innocent. Also for money. Stolen money. You promise your victims everything they’ve ever hoped and dreamed for, and then leave behind dried out husks whose names you don’t even remember.”

  He flinched at that. Good.

  “Your powers are spreadsheets and charm. Mine are a bit less sophisticated. I can rebuild myself thanks to some lab coats without ethics. I can replace parts at a whim.” The black goo was wriggling at my wrist stump, pulsing in the direction of the removed hand. It was wonderfully creepy.

  He looked down at his own hand. On the arm with the tourniquet. Comprehending at last. “No! No!”

  “Yes. Yes! Have you ever heard of muscle memory? The things you do all the time are remembered in the muscles. I’ll bet you type your password every day. Several times a day. Your hand knows exactly what I want it to do.”

  “Wait! I have other accounts! Money no one knows about. And I can get more. It’s all yours. You can have it if you don’t do this! Whatever she’s paying you, this has to be more!”

  I nodded in agreement. “That’s an interesting point. Also a tempting offer. And if you’d said it before we got so far down this road, I might have considered it.” I let that sink in. They never bargain until it’s too late. It’s like trying to avoid cancer after you already have it.

  “But it’s too late now. We’re committed, you and I. You have a body in your office, and that will be noticed, and they’ll notice you survived. They’ll probably find your DNA all over and in poor John. People will talk. Word will get around. And my dissatisfied customer will talk too. People love to gossip about failures. I can’t have that. I have a reputation to uphold. My integrity is at stake. I may be a monster, but I do have integrity. I also know that you’re the breed of monster that doesn’t know the meaning of the word, so this probably makes no sense to you. But to my kind it’s important. It means I do my job and I do it well.”

  “No, please! I can take care of Willard. I know people. No one will know. We can still make this work. Please!”

  “Willard. Funny name.” I pulled my Gurkha knife from its sleeve. A wicked thing, the blade was bent forward instead of straight, and it tapered from thick to a
fine thin edge, like an axe. Its point was sharpened to precision. The angles and weights combined to make the tip especially deadly. A good twist of the wrist and the point could slice through a phonebook like butter. In case you don’t know, phonebooks are books with lots of pages in them. Paper is tougher than it looks. You can’t rip a phonebook in half. Well, most can’t.

  I pulled off ‘Willard’s’ shoe and then his sock. The name bothered me. He didn’t look like a Willard. He was young and smartly dressed. A Willard should be wrinkly and balding. His parents must have wanted him beat up in high school.

  “No . . . I don’t think I’ll take you up on your offer.” I shoved Willard’s entire sock into the client’s mouth, making him gag. “Willard has had quite enough of your tender care.”

  I raised the knife and then brought it down like a sledge hammer.

  The strike was hard enough to not only sever the hand, but it took a good part of the chair arm with it.

  Spinach’s screams were muffled by the sock, but a bit of blood was on his lip. Must have bit his tongue despite the obstruction. His eyes were wide enough to pop out, but that’s just an expression. Eyes don’t pop out that easily. I know.

  I examined my work. The tourniquet was perfect, of course. Just one slight spurt and a few dabbles of blood.

  As the client was rattling back and forth in his chair, struggling with the pain, I brought his hand up to my stump. The black goo reached out for it all on its own, and then hungrily penetrated and seeped into every vein and artery. The goo contracted and I let go as it pulled the hand onto the stump. Muscles and nerves began knitting together, fed by the black capillary magic. Well, not exactly magic, per se, but you get the point. A moment later I flexed the hand and it moved. I swirled the digits. I couldn’t feel anything from it yet, but it worked.

  Normally I’d now stitch the part to hold it in place. It takes a few days for the attachment to become ‘permanent’. But for this, the goo hold was strong enough.

  My new fingers flew across the keys in an unfamiliar rhythm. Seconds later I was watching spinning beachball icons and filling bars as virtual money danced from one account to another. When the transfer was done I wiggled the hand some more and flexed it. I had a vague sense of awareness. It took a few tries, but I got the hand to open up Spinach’s secret accounts too. “Thanks for telling me about these by the way.”

  Spinach didn’t say anything. His eyes were dead. His face was empty of any trace of hope. If he wasn’t sweating profusely you could mistake him for a corpse.

  Finished, I went about restoring my previous hand to my arm. I guess you could say I was attached to it. I took the time to stitch this one in place with Dental floss. Floss is strong, waxed, cheap, and it comes wound up in tiny packages. It’s perfect. Unless its mint. Then I smell funny.

  I tossed Spinach’s hand into the satchel strung over my shoulder. It was a small case. Just big enough to keep a few useful appendages around in case of emergencies. Spinach’s wouldn’t be useful after today, but he didn’t need it anymore. You never know when something might come in handy. Hah! Unintentional pun. I love those!

  For the final act of my performance, I pulled out a tiny oxy/propane torch. This is the best part. You never know what will happen. Grabbing Spinach by the jaw, I turned his face so he could see it as I clicked it on. There was a slight hissing and a brilliant blue flame sprouted in front of his nose. I’d expect him to be out of tears by now, but they were rolling down his cheek.

  “Now this little tool here? It’s a favorite of mine. It has enough heat to sear flesh, but the tank is tiny, so I can carry several of them. The downside of it is there’s not a lot of gas. You have to be quick with it.” I set it on the desk in front of him. It wobbled, and I straightened it. I’m totally screwing this job up.

  I cleaned the Gurhka knife on the clients sleeve as he wept. I examined the blade, and then with a flick, cut the restraints on his good arm. After a spin of the blade - which I got right - I returned it to its sheath and buttoned the latch over the hilt to secure it in place.

  All good. Time to go.

  I slapped Spinach to get his attention. “Here’s how this works. If you don’t do something, you have a chance of developing gangrene and losing the whole limb, a concern, because who knows when you’ll be rescued? Plus you have to smell Willard here as his bowels empty and the body decays. Trust me. It’s a terrible smell. Or, you burn off the restraint you could bleed out in seconds. It’s supposed to be a good high. Fairly painless sleepy death. You could, however, cauterize the wound. That will likely save the arm and you’ll live. Such as it is. Your choice.”

  I returned to the shadows. “I gotta run. As one monster to another, it was nice meeting you.” I saluted and jogged out of the room.

  Moments later I was repelling down the building into a dark alley. When I reached the ground and unhitched the carabiners, I heard the scream. I knew that scream.

  “Huh. You surprised me. Didn’t think you had it in you, Spinach. Good for you. With stones like that, you might survive to hunt again.”

  A never say die attitude always cheers me up. You should never go quietly into that good night, I always say. I startled whistling. Despite my few goofs, I’d done a good night’s work.

  I emerged from the alley looking like someone else: a cap pulled low, with bulky clothes I’d hidden in the alley earlier concealing my gear and suit. Badass. A real creature of the night. Then I noticed my satchel freely flopping across my back and I realized another missed opportunity.

  “Ah man! Shit.” I stomped on the ground. I’d forgotten to say my favorite pun. “You see this satchel? It’s really a handbag.”

  Damn it. That’s going to bug me all night.

  I’ll have to do better next time.

  Back to Table of Contents

  Stripped Down Blues

  By Mike Baron

  * * *

  Baltazar Fusilier came on the radio at one a.m. Jeremy Mullen hopped on the assembly line and wanged air guitar like a Beechcraft taxiing for take-off, a hip-shakin’ anorexic Elvis. He flung sweat. He sneered and pouted.

  “Mullen, you get offa there and get back to work or ahmina fire your ass!” yelled the shift supervisor, a grizzled, porcine homunculus with a neck like a blow-up life preserver covered in black cashmere.

  Mullen wanged guitar in an enormous circle, getting his whole body into it, threatening to wind right off the line, finishing with a finger in the supervisor’s face. “Fuck you you fat fuck I quit.”

  The supervisor lunged, but he was old and fat, and didn’t really want to catch the sinewy slacker. Mullen danced nimbly away from the supervisor’s sausage fingers, whipped off his hairnet, shook out his long greasy hair and duck-walked down the line to the hoots and cheers of two dozen other losers whom life had deposited on the Otis The Singing Catfish assembly line in Midlothian, IL.

  “Hey Mullen!” shouted Shannon, a middle-aged Shelly Winters look-alike with a disabled kid at home. Unlike Mullen, she had no choice. People depended on her. If she didn’t assemble singing catfish, the kid didn’t eat. “Where you goin’?”

  Mullen leaped off the line by the loading dock, landing lightly on his feet. “I’m goin’ to Woonsocket, Missouri! Learn to play guitar like Baltazar Fusillier. Then I’m goin’ to Hollywood! Gonna be a rock and roll star!"

  And who among them didn’t feel a twinge of envy, even the fat supervisor? Envy was immediately replaced with smug certitude: that fucker was going nowhere. In the three weeks he’d been on the job, Mullen had been chronically tardy, dealt speed, popped off repeatedly, fucked around, and ripped off Singing Catfish to sell to Pollack kids on the South Side. Everybody drank and smoked pot on break.

  Mullen banged out the steel door into the sodium-lit parking lot, cracked blacktop gleaming with diamond dust, a sharp chemical tang in the air. Otis shared the industrial park with Sim Electronics whose acid reek permeated the atmosphere and was currently in EPA crosshairs.


  It was October. You could smell the manganese. Steel production always increased in October. Mullen strode to his Ride, his pride, his long, low glide, a 1979 primer-gray Firebird with a backwards-facing scoop poking up out of the middle of the hood like a tumor on a Mexican dog. The rear end was jacked-up to accommodate the twenty-inch wheels. The rear seats had been replaced by speakers and bass unit that were worth more than the car itself. The bass made the car’s ass hop around like a cockroach in a frying pan. Mullen loved pulling up to stoplights and watching other drivers raise their windows and give him dirty looks.

  Nobody messed with him. He had that mad dog glint in his eyes, brass knuckles in his pocket and a .38 Special on DVD and beneath the seat. He thought of hanging a sign in his rear view: 2 YRS 16 DAYS WITHOUT A DUI.

  Mullen opened the door and tossed the two Singing Catfish he’d kuiped onto the passenger’s seat. “It’s a treat to put your feet in the Mississippi mud,” sang a catfish.

  Mullen revved the three-fifty cubic inch engine and peeled out, leaving behind two long black streaks and the stink of burned petroleum. He fish-tailed onto Kropzyck Avenue and turned left, toward Little Egypt and the Mississippi Delta. Never looked back. His Strat was in the trunk along with a Pignose. Comes a time in a man’s life when he simply has to say Fuck It and head south.

  Let that dumb cow Wendy pay the rent. All she ever did was leech off him. She and her fucking cat. Mullen flicked on the AM, searched for KLAW out of Woonsocket, Missouri. Tiny station. Sheer fluke that Mullen had picked it up one night, cruising in his bitchin’ ‘Bird. He had never heard guitar like that. Few had. There lived in the mythical town of Woonsocket a guitar god, a guitar titan, a monster, a force of nature, a LIVE WIRE the likes of which the world hadn’t heard since Stevie Ray took the big nosedive. Since Jimi suffocated in his own puke. Since Tommy Bolin shot up too much smack.