Origins of a D-List Supervillain Read online

  Losing, and badly, at that, wasn’t something in my twenty-five year old vocabulary. I’d been a whiz kid and my talent had always kept me on top. I took a step at him, but stopped, figuring that it would make things that much easier for him. Turning, I saw the secretary with the phone already off the hook, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. She’d heard the entire exchange and would sell me out in a heartbeat for that son of a bitch!

  Face it Cal, he’s got you by the balls, I thought and walked back to my desk. Security was there to escort me out of the building, which was probably Barton’s plan, anyway. Even so, I walked out of there with my head held high. I was down, but I wouldn’t be out.

  • • •

  “I’m sorry, Calvin,” the voice on the other end of my prepaid cellphone said through the poor reception. “The judge decided not to hear our appeal. I wish I had better news for you, but it looks like it’s over for good.”

  There wasn’t enough fight left in me to scream at him. The suit wasn’t the bad guy here. He’d taken the case pro bono, looking to tilt at a few windmills. Unfortunately, Promethia’s slick legal team was three steps ahead of him at every turn. Hell, the day he was finally able to depose Patterson was the same day the tin-plated tyrant saved a bus full of senior citizens from going off the highway into the Pacific. Lazarus Patterson might as well have been kissing a baby during it.

  “No other options?” I asked. “They’re just going to take my invention, like that?”

  My free lawyer said a few more things that fell on deaf ears before I let him go and started planning my latest pity party. Barton was wrong. I’d had two revolutionary ideas in me. Even so, they’d protested my patent application for a power compressor and had said it was derivative of my work there. Despite power containment and directed energy weapons having about as much to do with each other as the electricity in a house and an appliance plugged into an outlet, the judge agreed with the moneybags and Promethia won again.

  I’d played the game to the best of my abilities. My first lawyer filed complaints with state and federal labor boards. There was a nicely worded one that brought the wrath of OSHA down on Lazarus Patterson’s company, at least for a day, but Barton’s virtual blacklisting had stuck like a case of vocational herpes. The high tech companies on both coasts wanted nothing to do with me. Promethia had stepped in when I wanted to go work for a university in South Korea and now I was on some kind of International Travel Watch list with no passport.

  A child molesting, white supremacist had a better shot of landing a decent job than I did. Only one of Promethia’s competitors brought me in for something resembling an interview, but it was mainly some kind of spat between rich men who had too much time and money on their hands. By that point I knew I was just leverage in a corporate version of the game chicken. I tried grad school, but my applications invariably got lost or I’d get rejected by a university that suddenly received new grant money.

  Facing less opportunity than a known card counter trying to get into a casino, I took whatever I could get, which was how I ended up in a small town in Mississippi.

  “So,” Dougie Walters said as he invaded my personal space. “I know you like to tell people how you used to work on Ultraweapon’s suit and all that inventing stuff, but what I really need from you, Mr. Engineer, is that brake job on Mrs. Conroy’s Caddy before she takes her money somewhere else. Think you can do that, or have you got some supahero bidness that’s gonna interfere?”

  Dougie was the manager at Chism’s Brake and Muffler Shop, where my skills weren’t exactly being tested, and the salary was a drop in the bucket compared to what I used to make.

  “I’ll get it done, Dougie,” I said, not wanting to lose the only job I’d been able to hold for more than six weeks since Promethia decided to make my life a living hell.

  Dougie stood there, spitting his chew into a styrofoam cup, like the stereotype of every redneck mechanic all rolled into one. I glanced away at the trickle of black liquid that dribbled down the side of his mouth. He must have taken that as a sign that I accepted his superiority, instead of my abject disgust.

  “Well, then,” he said, satisfied that he was the alpha male, or maybe the fattest pig on this farm. “Don’t let me keep ya. Also, since you’re some kinda fancy electrician, take a look at her ‘lectrical system and see if you can find what’s draining her battery.”

  Nodding, I ignored the slight to my electrical engineering degree and thought, Good thing this place only works on American, or as Roscoe P. Butthole over there would say, ‘Merikan, cars. Otherwise, F.Randall’s lapdogs would probably find a way to get me fired from here as well.

  “It’s got dealer tags on it, why isn’t her husband’s dealership working on it?”

  Dougie answered, “Word out in town is that she and Mr. Moneybags are pretty much through. She’s all paranoid his boys’d cut her brake lines or something.”

  Argos Mississippi didn’t count as much of a town. It should have been named Hour Away, because it was at least an hour away from anything remotely interesting. Then again, it could also be Rock Bottom, because here I was—renting a doublewide trailer and daring the powers above to come and finish me.

  F. Randall Barton probably laughed over cocktails with Lazarus Patterson about how completely screwed I was.

  Sadly, the man had turned my fate over to a group of overzealous brown-nosers. With the exception of stealing my patent, I wasn’t worth his time anymore. My fall was now officially complete and I was more nuisance than nemesis.

  I was still fuming about the sad state of affairs when I reached the caddy to get it up on the lift. The inside put the filthy in filthy rich. The disposable paper floor mat was used more for my protection than anything else. Driving into the bay, I had to roll the window down. It smelled like the aftermath of a damned frat party in there.

  Dougie sauntered back forty-five minutes later. “I don’t ‘spose you’re done already?”

  “With the brakes,” I said. “I haven’t even started on the electrical problem, yet.”

  He hemmed and hawed for a minute before I said, “What is it?”

  “Well, it’s like this,” he said. “She’s out there raising hell, so I’ma gonna give her our loaner and when you finish with her caddy, you can drop it off and come back in the loaner.”

  “I don’t even know what’s wrong with it yet,” I said looking over at the battered clock on the wall. “Even if I do, there’s no guarantee that I can get whatever part might need to be replaced.”

  “Yeah, that’s the thing. I told her you’d stay ‘til it’s done.”

  “So, you’re going to pay overtime?” I said to the notorious tightwad.

  “Shit, naw! I’ll make it up to ya down the way. ‘Sides, you’re such a hotshot that you should already be done insteada flappin’ your yap with me.”

  That was “Dougiespeak” for “Don’t count on it and be happy you have a job.” I knew he’d fleece the woman out there for the extra work, but I wouldn’t see a dime of it.

  Three months ago, I would have laughed at him and walked out the door. I still had some self-respect back then.

  “Sure, Dougie,” I said digging a few more inches farther into my rock bottom. “I’ll take care of it.”

  By closing time, I’d learned a few things about Tracy Conroy. She was first and foremost a mess and on her way back to being named Tracy Jeffries. Under the driver’s seat was a monument to prescription drug abuse. The empty pill bottles under her seat with addresses from pharmacies in a three hour radius told me she coped with her personal problems with the support of her three close friends Xanax, Ambien, and oxycodone. The bleached blonde pill-popper was also pretty careless of her possessions as well.

  Wedged into the crack between the seat and the console, with the flotsam and jetsam of someone who was rich enough to drown their sorrows in legal drugs and booze, was a pair of bank envelopes with three hundred dollars inside and a really expensive tennis brace
let.

  Call me paranoid, but I immediately considered the possibility that this might be a setup. Repeatedly getting the shaft had influenced my disposition. I set the valuables on the passenger seat and began working on the short in the seat heater, which appeared to be at the root of her electrical problem.

  “Because having a seat heater in southern Mississippi is so damned important,” I muttered knowing I could probably just disconnect the stupid thing and be done with it, but it wasn’t that difficult of a repair—more time consuming than anything else.

  Pondering my situation, I found this moment was dangerously close to defining me—in the middle of nowhere repairing something that isn’t even necessary. Was this what my life had come to?

  • • •

  Three hours after the shop closed, the seat was back together. The same couldn’t be said about me. I locked up and read the directions Dougie left scrawled on a piece of paper and drove out into the hot night in search of Tracy Conroy’s house.

  The caddy was a decent enough ride. When I was still hauling in buckets of money out west, I’d had a mustang and wouldn’t have considered something like this. I had been all about speed and performance. This was a vehicle for dudes in their fifties who had the money, but were out of the game, or for guys who had lost their nerve.

  Maybe that’s why I was starting to like it.

  According to the directions, she lived about thirty minutes outside of town. Rolling down the windows helped air the odor out and make the drive a little more bearable. My eyes kept drifting over to the bank envelope with the money and the tennis bracelet inside. The bit of sparkling jewelry was probably worth more than I’d see this year and my lawyer mentioned that Promethia’s goon squad might be considering suing me for legal costs; to add insult to injury. I’d never considered being a criminal before, but the temptation was there in spades.

  After a few minutes of searching through the stations for anything to listen to, I gave it up and started singing some of my old standbys. I was halfway through a rousing rendition of Just a Friend when I spotted the cluster of emergency vehicles and the sea of brake lights on the two lane highway ahead. Eventually, some of the rubberneckers began making three point turns at the urging of the police. One cruiser pulled up next to me and the man inside said, “You’re gonna haveta turn around. The road’s going to be closed for a few hours.”

  “What happened?” I asked, filled with morbid curiosity.

  “Some fool went off the road and wrapped her Camry around a tree at about sixty miles an hour.”

  “Camry?” I said, getting an odd feeling. Our loaner was a Camry. “Was the Camry white and the driver a woman?”

  “Yeah,” the officer answered. “Ya reckon ya know who she was?”

  “I work at Chism’s Brake and Muffler,” I said. “We loaned our white Camry to Tracy Conroy while I stayed and fixed her caddy. I’ve got keys for the loaner here. They’ve got the plate number on them.”

  I read him the tag number while he radioed to the accident scene for confirmation. It didn’t take more than a minute before he said, “I don’t think you’ll be getting that loaner back anytime soon.”

  I’d already set the useless spare keys to the loaner back on the passenger seat—next to that small envelope filled with cash and a very expensive tennis bracelet while a scheme began to form in my mind. F. Randall Barton, Lazarus Patterson, and their Armani wearing choirboys weren’t going to let me make an honest living. What had being the nice guy and playing by the rules ever gotten me? Tracy Conroy’s drug and alcohol-binge fueled death was a sign of what happens when someone spends too long at rock bottom.

  That wasn’t going to be me!

  With the officer following me back to the shop, where I’d call Dougie back and have him confirm my account, I slid that bank envelope into my pocket. Tracy no longer needed the contents and her widower owned three car dealerships. This bauble probably meant squat to him and he wouldn’t care.

  As for me, a whole new group of possibilities were opening up. All of them sprouted from a single idea I’d had several times, but never when I was stone cold sober. I did build Ultraweapon’s force blasters after all, and that power compressor would allow one powercell to do the work of three. It was there on a two lane highway, driving a dead woman’s car that I decided I could make my own version of the Ultraweapon suit.

  After a couple of rudderless years where I let people with more money and power get the best of me and push me around, I had a purpose. This time, I’d be the one doing all the pushing.

  Chapter Two

  ManaCALes is Not a Stupid Name

  “Hey, Cal, how are things?”

  “As well as can be expected, Dad,” I said into the receiver. “How are things with you and Mom?”

  As chit chat goes, it was pretty much how we started every conversation. Dad managed a bowling alley several hundred miles away which was about as close as I liked my parents to be.

  “Oh, the same,” he replied. “Your mom’s probably going to have to get her hip replaced in the next few months.”

  “That’s not good,” I said. “Tell her that I’m thinking of her.” My mother and I had a complicated relationship. Well, actually it was pretty simple. She doted on her brilliant son and bragged to all her friends about how much better I was, as opposed to their crotch droppings. My whole blacklisting from any high tech position in this country appeared to have hurt her social standing, and accordingly, she blamed me. At least, that’s what I could surmise. For her part, she pretty much just stopped talking to me.

  That’s me, I thought. The big disappointment. I’d be her least favorite child, if she had any other.

  “I’ll do that, Calvin. Don’t mind her, she’s just being difficult. Sorry about your court case. Is your lawyer going to try and appeal?”

  I took a deep breath and said, “No. I think it’s over at this point. The rich get richer and the little guys get the shaft. Seems like that’s the way it’s been done and that’s what’s happening now. It’d be nice if Barton got hit by a truck, but with my luck he’d have left instructions in his will for his flunkies to keep harassing me while Lazarus gets to keep playing hero in his shiny suit.”

  Dad paused for a few seconds before saying, “Doesn’t seem fair, though. Any time that sonnuva bitch is on the news, I just flip the channels. I keep hoping someone’s going to whip him good.”

  Considering all he watched was bowling and the cable news channels that really said something. Dad wasn’t a brilliant man. He worked hard and I’d like to think I inherited his determination. As for my mom, she had the brainpower and the acerbic wit. Had she been born a decade or two later, I’m certain she’d be in a powersuit as an executive in a fortune five hundred company. Instead, she worked in accounts receivable for a furniture wholesaler keeping their books balanced.

  If I was being brutally honest, Monica Stringel probably thought that she had “settled” for the life she lived and tried to live vicariously through the accomplishments of her son. When my professional life took a hard left and dived into the dumpster both my dreams and apparently hers were shattered.

  Hell, all it took was four weeks of being back home after I’d abandoned California for me to wear out my welcome and decide to hit the road and look for any place else—even if that landed me in Argos, Mississippi.

  “I’m sure they’ll get what’s coming to them in the end.” I said, thinking it might be sooner now that I’d reached a decision.

  “You know what they say about karma, Cal?”

  “Let’s hope so. Well, I hate to cut it short,” I said, lying. “But I’ve got to get going to work. Let me know when Mom plans on having that surgery. I’ll try to make it back or at least send flowers.”

  “You take care,” he said. “It’ll all work out in time.”

  “Thanks Dad. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  Hanging up, I shook my head. I looked at the round trip bus ticket in my hand. My beat-up, ol
d Hyundai probably wouldn’t make the trip to and from Miami. Some kind of vacation was in order, plus I knew a pawnshop owner down there, who wouldn’t ask too many questions about a certain bracelet I possessed. Joey Hazelwood had the misfortune of having the same name as the captain of that tanker that dumped all that oil into Prince William Sound, and the equally dubious distinction of being my roommate for four years at UCLA.

  • • •

  “So the woman is dead and the husband has already moved on with his new girlfriend,” Joey said. “You better not be shitting me, Cal.”

  He’d packed on the pounds and was fighting a losing battle with his hairline already. The truth was that Joey Hazelwood had gone to shit, but I’d beat him there by a country mile.

  “I’m on the level, Joey. He’ll probably assume she hocked it for money,” I answered. “You could just as easily say it was a blonde in here and no one would be the wiser.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I can move this. Damn, Strings, remember when I was going to be a marketing genius and you were going to invent the things we were going to sell? Where did we go wrong?”

  “Well, I think it was when you inherited this place from your uncle and switched coasts and I decided that Promethia would look nice on my resume. That’d be my guess. So, what’s it worth and what can you give me for it?”

  “It’s worth about twenty five,” he said. “I’ll give you eight for it, because I’ll have to send it to a guy up in New York to sell it, which means I’m only going to get fifteen.”

  Frowning, I wanted a bit more, but knew Joey wasn’t going to be able to go much higher. “I’ll take two and some store credit if you have any tech.”

  “What do you need?”

  “What have you got in the way of powercells?”