SUICIDE KINGS
Prelude: Play With Fire
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, 1960
I: Liv
Liv Napier opened the basement window of Paulie's house and crawled in.
She looked both ways, and then, breathing hard, darted under the basement stairs.
Finally, she felt safe.
She was in a lot of pain, where that pusher kid had stabbed her, but she wasn't bleeding a lot.
Not a whole lot.
Not enough to die in the next few minutes.
Or half-hour or so.
She knew she'd have to go to the doctor, but right now she was scared and she needed to hide and try and think of what to do next.
Somebody was going to call the cops.
You couldn't just smash a guy with a brick and leave him lying there and nobody would call the cops.
But he had hurt her, and tried to hurt Laurie and Paulie, and she had to do something.
He had a knife.
Just like the man who came up to her and Uncle Mac in the car had a gun.
Daddy said that because of him that violence would follow her everywhere. Pop told her she shouldn't be cruel, and she should never attack without reason, but if someone was going to hurt her, or someone she was close to, she had to defend herself, and only to use serious force or serious harm as a last resort.
Maybe, though, the cops would find out who her daddy was, and they'd take her away, figuring she was too much like him.
If they put her in the bughouse with Daddy, it wouldn't be so bad, but what if they put her in there, alone?
And she had only been living with her new stepfather about six months. She didn't want to go to a home, and she knew that Uncle Mac and Aunt Marge still didn't have the money to take care of her, and the courts wouldn't let them, they weren't really related, and they had never legally adopted her.
They gave her to Mr. Wayne.
Bruce.
Pop.
Pop might get mad if he found out what she did.
Maybe he wouldn't want her, anymore, either.
Then, maybe she could stay with Laurie and Sally, or maybe Paulie and his family.
She didn't want to have to go to a home, daddy grew up in a home and he told her they did awful things to you there, that she'd go to a place like that over his dead body and a pile of others.
Liv hated to cry, but she couldn't keep the tears from rolling down her face.
She was in pain, and bleeding and cold and scared.
Scared she might bleed to death in Paulie's basement, scared she was going to have to leave her new stepdad and her brother and the home she had just got used to.
Liv didn't like being scared.
She had learned to be tough so she didn't have to be scared, and thinking about being tough, it made her feel better.
Whatever was going to happen, she could take it, and she would make it.
Blood was welling out from under Liv's hand, down over her fingers and down her arm from her shoulder, and blood was trickling down her leg, as well.
I'm only scared because I've never been stabbed before. Next time I won't be scared. Next time I'll be older, I'll be grown up and a superhero like Sally and Pop, and I won't have to be scared.
She knew a little first-aid, Pop and Sally, as part of her superhero training, had taught her a little first aid.
She took off her shirt and took out her pocketknife and cut it into a couple of strips, to make bandages.
She had lost her coat and it was cold in the basement, in just her undershirt, but maybe the cold would stop her bleeding and keep her awake.
Until it was safe to come out.
Until she could figure out what to do.
II: Eddie
"So, Ivan's workin', now?"
"Yeah. He's back on the garbage truck after that salvage job at the docks finished up. You know Ivan. He'll work long enough to get unemployment, and then he'll be here again, coming up with a way to get one some other kinda government gravy train, an' get more food stamps." Edie reported.
Eddie laughed.
"When it comes ta gettin' over, Ivan's a genius."
"You would say that, Eddie. And Paulie's gonna be just like the both of you, I can tell, already."
"Awww, let him fuck around a little. You don't work for wages, either, do ya?"
Just like when he was living there with their younger brothers and sisters, the kitchen was Grand Central Station, the door banging open and closed, this time with the next generation of Blakes going in and out.
WHAM!
"Ma! Ma! We got into a fight at the playground, a big fight and this older kid, he stabbed Liv! Stabbed her with a knife! She ran away! And and he's lyin' there and I think he's like, dead and shit and we gotta call Mr. Wayne and you shoulda seen all the blood it was everywhere goddamn look I got blood all over me, Jesus, Uncle Eddie, lookit, lookit alla blood!"
Paulie, like a lot of the members of his family, was proud, headstrong, and an outcast, and he spent much of his time with kids who fit that mould, including his cousin, Laurie Juspeczyk, and Laurie's mother's youngest mask trainee, Trivelino "Liv" Napier.
At the tender age of 11, Liv was a smart, pretty little red-haired girl in pigtails, Keds and pegged Levis with a thousand- watt smile and a cheerful, sunny personality. On the other hand, when she got mad, she was about four feet and eight inches and sixty pounds of fury and hellfire that could cause, and take a lot more damage than you might think.
And Paulie was bloodied up pretty bad.
Still, Paulie was a real bullshit artist, another Blake family trait, so Eddie was withholding judgment.
Laurie who was also 11, came in next, blood dripping out of her nose and a shiner forming over her eye.
"I'm sorry Miz Blake, but you gotta hide me! The cops are after me!"
"Go in the basement. Nobody will find youse in the basement!" Paulie suggested.
"Oh my God, Laurie, honey, look at you! I'm gonna call your mother, what happened to you? Eddie, look after her. And Paulie. Get them cleaned up. And where the hell is Liv? Oh My God, she got stabbed, I have to call Mr. Wayne, too." Edie exclaimed.
They all heard a siren coming up the street.
Eddie stood up and Paulie and Laurie immediately hid behind him, and they weren't the kind of kids who got spooked about anything.
They must have been telling the truth.
That was enough for him.
He put his arms around their shoulders and Laurie grabbed onto his hand.
"Son of a bitch! Edie, let Aggie make phone calls. She can't stand the sight of blood. Paulie, go with your mother. She'll clean you up. You too, Laurie. I'll handle the cops."
Laurie wouldn't let go of him.
"But that jerkoff pusher kid, he stabbed Liv! She ran away, and I don't know where she is! You gotta help us! Your Ma's boyfriend, right? I ain't got a father, so you better do something!" Laurie told him.
Talk about shots to the heart.
"Honey, I am gonna do something, but not with you hangin' onto my leg. Let Edie clean you up. I'll talk to the cops, and then I'll find Liv. Alright?"
"Alright. But if she's dead, I'm gonna kill that kid."
The police came to the house and Eddie met them in the doorway, almost filling it.
Big and glowering.
It was his youngest brother, Mickey, his partner was still in the car
"What the fuck, Mickey? What's goin' on in our neighbourhood?"
"You know how it is, Eddie. You take five of em off the street, these punks, there's ten more the next day. When I heard the call was to the old house, I took it. What the hell's going on here, Eddie? I got some troublemakin' punk who ain't from the neighbourhood lyin' out in front of the sidewalk by the park with three teeth knocked out and his head cracked open. He's about 15, 16, been trying to sell reefers down at the park. He's bleedin' all over the place and the only witness I got says he saw my nephew runnnin' away from the scene. That's it. You tell me what the fuck is going on."
"I'll tellya what. He fuckin' beat on two little girls, one of whom is mine. I'll kill the cocksucker! He fuckin' stabbed a little girl eleven years old and beat her up. Paulie's friend, Liv."
"That little girl Mac usedta take care of? Liv Napier, Crazy Jack's kid? Why would he do that? Is he fuckin' suicidal?"
"I know the kid. She probably tried to run him off the playground."
"Wait. You're telling me a little girl splattered his teeth all over the sidewalk and smashed his head in with a brick after he stabbed her a coupla times because she was trying to run him out of the park?"
"Yeah. Her and Laurie, they're pretty territorial about that park, and nobody can tell 'em they ain't goddamn Batman, yet."
"Jesus! Are they here?"
"Paulie and my kid are. Nobody knows where Liv is. She's holed up someplace, scare outa her wits an' bleedin' to death. Just get that prick off the street and put him in your car. I'm gonna take care of this asshole. You understand me, Mickey?"
"Sure I do, Eddie. Sure. We could use the help. In the meantime, I'm gonna go look for the little girl."
Eddie had an idea of his own where the kid could be hiding.
It was a long shot, but this had been his house for years and he knew the best place in it for kids to hide; he had raised two brothers and two sisters in this house.
Eddie went down into the basement, just with a flashlight, and closed the door behind him.
He didn't want to scare her.
The Comedian could see blood by the window, and blood on the floor, and he clicked off the flashlight and walked over to the little crawlspace under the stairs, and sat down on the floor in front of it.
"You in there, Liv? C'mon, kid, I know you're in there. You can't stay in there. You're hurt. You gotta go to the doctor's with your Pop."
"Izzat you, Mr. Blake? Youse alone?"
She sounded like she was using up all her tough to get over the scared.
"Yeah. And I'm alone, kid."
"I can't come out. The cops are after me."
"You wanna tell me why?"
"Can't. That would be squealing. An' I ain't no rat."
"That's okay, kid. You can tell me. I ain't no cop. I'm a mask, like your stepdad. Like Sal. Like you and Laurie are gonna be someday. I'll take care of it. No cops. No questions."
"You're a mask? Really?"
"Yeah, kid. I swear."
"Swear in blood?"
Eddie pricked his finger on a nail sticking out from under the stairs, and held his hand out under them.
"Yeah. I swear in blood."
A suspicious little hand darted over his, and felt for the drops of blood.
A suspicious little hand that was slick with blood.
Jesus, the kid was hurt real bad.
"Which one?"
"I'm the Comedian."
"No shit?" Liv asked.
"I swear, kid. No shit."
"Oh. Okay. Sally says you're okay. So does my Pop. Don't worry, I won't tell anybody. I swear in blood. You got it all over your hand, already. Okay. This guy, he's a real asshole. He sells pills and reefers an' shit, and I didn't care when he did it outside, but when he came in my park, I warned him to get lost. He didn't listen, so last week, me and Laurie, we followed him at night and we jumped him on his bike and beat him up with stacks of dimes in our fists. He came back after us with a knife. I got out in front of Paulie and Laurie. It's okay, I wasn't afraid. I been shot, I figured bein' stabbed wouldn't be so bad after gettin' shot. I was wrong. I think it's worse. It hurts more. He stabbed me a coupla times while I was fighting him, then we all started fighting him and he dropped the knife and he hit Laurie and Paulie and I saw this brick, so I picked it up and hit him with it a coupla times and ran away. He's dead, but I don't care. He was trying to kill us, wasn't he? Fuck'm."
"In the first place, kid, he ain't dead. In the second place, you ain't a Junior G-Man. From now on, you tell your Pop, or Sal, or me, or a cop if somethin' like that happens."
"Why? Laurie and me are gonna be superheroes when we grow up, and it's our park." Liv said.
"Because you ain't grown up yet. What if he had a gun?"
The kid stuck her leg out and pulled up her pants leg, and she had a holster strapped to her leg with a snub-nosed .45 in it.
"Daddy said I should never, ever take this gun off. Ever."
"You know what, kid? That was good advice. But you gotta ease up on this killin' people shit. That guy who shot at you, fine. And the guy with the knife, it woulda been okay to shoot him, too. And it was okay to hit him with the brick. But if somebody ain't comin' at you with a knife or a gun or a brick, if they ain't gonna kill you. you don't even try to kill 'em. That's' what you got fists for. And if you can't take him or there's too many of them, you gotta run away. And get help. And that goes for when you're grown up, too. Alright?"
"Okay. I know that. Pop told me."
"You gonna come out now? I'll bet your Pop's up there, waitin' for you."
"He won't be mad, an' send me to an orphans home?"
"No. You did the right thing. You got nothin' to be scared of."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
The kid didn't say anything for awahile.
"Well, okay. I guess I trust youse."
The poor little kid came out, and she was all dirty and bloody and shivering, but if she was scared, she was trying not to look it.
She had ripped up her shirt to make bandages, and she was dragging her leg, shivering and freezing, and Eddie took off his shirt and wrapped her in it and picked her up.
She hung onto him like she didn't want to ever let go.
He carried her upstairs and when they got to the top, Eddie opened the door.
"…he's looking for her, Mr. Wayne. I'm sure he'll find her." He heard Edie saying.
There was Wayne, in his suit and his expensive camel-hair overcoat, looking about as upset as any man who found out his little girl had been stabbed and was missing.
"I found her, Bruce. She was hiding in the basement. From the cops. The son of a bitch stabbed her in her leg, in her shoulder, scratched up her arms. She can't walk."
Eddie handed Liv over to her stepdad.
"Oh My God, My God! Trivelino, what were you thinking? You could have bled to death down there!"
"I didn't want the cops to get me. I was scared."
"From now on, if you get into trouble, you tell me about it. Or Sally. Or Mr. Blake. You're not old enough to handle these things yourselves. Don't worry about the police getting you. You're not your father, they're not after you."
"Are you gonna send me to a home, Pop?"
"What? No! Liv, honey, I am never going to send you to a home. No matter what. You're a good girl. This wasn't your fault. Those places are not for girls like you. Now, we're going to go to the hospital, and they'll fix you up. And then I'll see about this."
"Don't worry about the guy who did this, Bruce. You take are of your kid. He beat Laurie up, too. I'm going to take care of him." The Comedian promised.
"Permanently?" Batman asked.
"Permanently."
"Good."
The Bat left in a hurry with his little girl, and Eddie found Laurie and Paulie, all patched up sitting at the kitchen table.
Sally was there with them.
When she saw Eddie, she got up.
"Laurie, you stay here with Edie. I have work to do."
Eddie went out to his car, got his costume, and put it on.
Sally had hers on under her overcoat.
"Sally, I'm not takin' this guy to the authorities."
"Yeah, Eddie, I figured that."
They walked over to the park, where Mickey and his partner were detaining the punk in question.
"Here he is now. The nice man we told you about who doesn't like punks that push dope to children and beat up little girls. And this is his friend. They've been waiting to meet you," the other cop said.
"No! No, don't turn me over to him! To her, either! I got rights! No! No, don't!"
"You stabbed my student, and beat up my little girl. You ain't got shit, asshole." Sally told him.
The older policeman, an Italian guy, shoved the punk kid towards Eddie and Sally and got in the cop car.
"Come on, Mickey. We're done here. Let's go have lunch."
"Sounds good to me, Al." Mickey said.
The police car drove away.
"What are you two gonna to do me?"
"Us? Nothin'. But, that girl you stabbed? That was Jack Napier's daughter. An' I can't say what he's gonna do to you, but trust me, when he's done, you're gonna wish it had been me and not him."
The punk made a lot of noise, and Eddie didn't want to hear it, so he cracked the asshole in the head, again, and threw him in the trunk.
He was still making noise, so Sally gave him another smack, and that knocked him out.
They got in the car and drove down to the docks, to make a delivery.
Sally waited in the car while Eddie went to see his old friend.
"Stabbed her? In the park? What the hell is this world coming to when kids can't play in the park without some idiot lunatic maniac trying to push dope? That's who you superheroes should be chasing after, not guys like me!" the Joker sniffed.
"Whole city's goin' crazy, Jack. I do my best, and your buddy the Bat, he does street work, but you know how it is. Nobody wants the dirty jobs. An' in my neighbourhood too. So I got work to do. I can't have this fuckin' shit goin on in my neighbourhood."
"Well, my little girl plays in that park, too. Tell you what, Eddie. I'll find out if this punk and whoever he's with are connected to anybody of consequence. If they aren't, then you can take care of all of them. As for this one, his friends are going to be finding pieces of him, everywhere. They'll get the message. I'll go see Livvie in the hospital tonight, after visiting hours. I'll be in touch."
"Yeah. I'll be ready."
Eddie went back to his car and he and Sally drove back to Bensonhurst.
"If something's going on, Eddie, I want to know about it."
"You're retired, Sal."
"My kid spends a lot of time in that neighbourhood. The costume still fits me, doesn't it?"
"Fair enough. When it's time for somethin' ta happen, I'll let youse know."
They were both quiet for awhile.
"You busy, tonight, Eddie?"
"I was. I ain't now."
"Well, how about you come over around eleven? Laurie will be in bed by then."
"Sounds good, Sal. I'll be there."
New York City, 1966
I: Laurie
One thing Laurie knew, if you looked up, "Out of fucking control" in the dictionary, there would be her friend Liv Napier's picture.
In her blood-spattered Harlequin costume of a chequered, particolor boiler suit and jump boots, with a gun in one hand, a bottle in the other, a cigarette in the middle of her grin and a black eye.
She said she'd painted up the boiler suit to look more like an old-fashioned Harlequin, but couldn't fool Laurie. Liv painted up the boiler suit to hide the blood and motor oil; not to mention the come-stains from her various conquests.
Liv was fucking brilliant, she was sixteen and in her sophomore year of college and, like Laurie, her freshman year of being a superhero, and everybody was so busy noticing her accomplishments that they failed to notice that she spent all of her free time fucking, drinking, fighting and driving too fast, in that order.
She still trained with Laurie's mother, and Sally seemed to be confused that Liv, who wore men's GI-issue fatigue underwear and had not worn a dress since she was three was not a lesbian, but so were the men Liv hit on.
That was because Sally had never seen Liv in action looking for some action.
Good old Napalm, she was in the double-digits, already.
She could pick up either an angel-faced recently Midwestern hippie kid or a tough old buzzard with an anchor tattooed on his arm and a bad attitude in a bar and fuck them in her car and be back for another drink inside of fifteen minutes.
Which was the least disgusting of Liv's hobbies.
The most disgusting was her truly disconcerting habit of buying cheap, dirty superhero fuckbooks and comix, and leering about how much time she spent jacking off to them when she got the urge.
There was something incredibly perverse about a masked hero who was the daughter of a supervillian and the step-daughter of another masked hero buying that cheap shit made for horny housewives and slavering teenagers and getting off on it, even though she knew most of the men featured therein, and what they were really like.
Maybe she figured none of them would actually fuck her, maybe she was too lazy to try, and she'd rather just open a book and unzip her fly.
It wasn't like Liv had ever been good and decent and clean.
Laurie had always known Liv and she had never been anything but a crazy tomboy outcast. She still swore like a pirate, smoked like a chimney, and got into fights. And when she thought she had what was right on her side, forget it. She had a great sense of humour, and she was smart as hell, and when Liv Napier was your friend, that was it, she would take a fucking bullet for you, even when she was seven.
Liv was a good friend. In spite of everything, she was a decent person; she went to places no other mask would go to help people no other mask would touch; she did the dirty work because she was hard enough and tough enough to do it. Her good side was as good as gold, but her bad side was worse, and the older she got the worse it got.
She'd started drinking when she was eleven, and she was a habitual drinker by the time she was 13 and discovered that boys were good for something other than beating on. And whatever it was, the conjunction of booze and sex and puberty meeting up with the general craziness that was Liv Napier, and she just kept getting crazier and crazier, until here she was.
And because Liv did well in school, very well, and she showed up for her job and for her classes and did her mask work, no matter what, nobody older really knew just how out of fucking control she was.
Now she was tying up the can after they were done training, and Laurie had an idea of what, and it wasn't funny, because she really had to piss.
"Liv? Liv, what the hell are you doing in there? I gotta pee, goddamnit!"
"I'm almost done. Wait a minute, Lar. I'm all keyed up from trainin'. I gotta blow off some steam, here, so I don't get into a fight at the movie with the first asshole who talks to the screen and eats his popcorn too loudly."
"Doing what…Oh my God!"
"Hey! Close the fucking door, will you! Christ!"
Laurie knew that her good as gold friend Liv was also a mean, bad woman who never did any man any good, but to discover her sitting on the john with her pants on and her fly open with her hand tattooed with a death's head and cross-bones stuffed down her motor-oil and blood flecked Levi's, getting herself off to a fuckbook about the Comedian?
They knew the Comedian.
He was Paulie's uncle, he was around, sometimes.
He'd been around, sometimes, since they were little kids.
He was Laurie's mother's off again, on again boyfriend, for Christ's sake.
And Liv, she called him Mr. Blake.
And she had a Comedian fuckbook?
That was beyond gross.
It was criminal.
"You're a sick woman, Liv! Jesus, what is the matter with you? I mean you never go more than three days without screwing somebody and usually anybody and you still spend more time fucking playing with yourself than anybody in the fucking world! You are so fucked up! I'm going upstairs to use my Mom's bathroom! Do not leave that thing here. I don't want her to see it!"
Laurie slammed the door and crashed upstairs.
"Oh my God, what the hell is the matter with Liv? She's down there reading a goddamn superhero fuckbook about the Comedian, of all people, and goddamn playing with herself! In the goddamn bathroom! And, meanwhile, she's always balling somebody! Anybody! What is the matter with that girl?"
Hollis Mason's jaw was working, of that he was aware, it was just that he couldn't make any words come out of his mouth.
"She just hasn't found the right guy." Sally volunteered.
"The right guy! The right guy? You mean the right two or three guys! Mom, you have no idea."
"Maybe, honey. It takes all sorts to make a world." Sally told her.
Liv came upstairs, rolling the comic book into a cylinder and sticking it in her jacket pocket.
"Hiya, Mr. Mason."
"Hello, Liv,"
"So, you ready to go, Lar?" she asked Laurie.
"Did you wash your goddamn hands? I'm not getting in your car if you didn't wash your goddamn hands."
"Sure I did." Liv said.
The two girls left to go to the movies.
Sally looked at the look on Hollis' face, and started to laugh.
"Are you alright, Hollis?"
"You know, I often wonder the same thing about Liv. She started coming to my garage to work on her cars when she was about 14, and it was cute, then, her in overalls, smoking, swearing like a pirate, and sneaking around with Joe Mac, getting into schoolyard fistfights and sneaking beers. It's not cute anymore. She comes in beat all to hell, and drunk, at all hours of the night; I have to get out of bed and take the tools out of her hand and pretend I don't see the evidence of whoever the last tough guy old enough to be her father all over the front of her coveralls, next to the blood and motor oil. What the hell is the matter with that girl?"
Sally waved her hand, dismissively.
"Awww, she's young, she's a little wild, she's too smart for her own good and she's a superhero. With a whole lot of money. She'll settle down, eventually. I did."
"Sally, you were never that wild."
"Hollis, honey, you don't know the half of it."
***
The first place they went was to a bar in Bensonhurst, not Trivelino Mac's, another bar, where Liv bought a case of beer, out in the back, from some guys her father knew.
Then they went to Paulie's house, and Liv just blew the horn.
Paulie was another crazy motherfucker. They called him Crazy Paulie in the neighbourhood, that was his name.
He grew his hair all the way down to the middle of his back; he sued FDR High in the fucking federal court for his right not to cut it, or the long Rasputin beard that he sometimes grew to the pint where he braided it.
Paulie had a tattoo on his chest that said "Live Freaky, Die Freaky", but considering that he was over six foot and close to 200 pounds and just 16, people left him alone.
He got in the car in his usual uniform of jeans, sneakers and one of his Uncle Eddie's castoof welder's jackets and Liv peeled out in a blaze of glory.
"You wanna beer, Paulie?" she asked
"Not just yet, Naplam."
That was the name her roomie at NYU, Jean Grey, from the X-Institue gave Liv, and it suited her right down to the bones.
"Well, I'm havin' another."
She reached into the back seat, cracked another can of Newcastle Brown, tossed the empty out the window and kept flooring it.
They were going to the drive-in.
After the second movie, Laurie and Paulie went to get some more food, and Liv went looking for some action.
She brought some guy to the car, and Paulie moved into the front seat with Laurie while Liv balled this dude in the back, and then she gave him a can of beer and sent him on his way.
"You wanna 'nother beer, Paulie? How bout you, Lar?"
"One more." Paulie said.
"I'm cool." Laurie replied.
Liv tossed them a couple more beers, anyway, so Paulie and Laurie split one.
Paulie fell asleep, during the third movie, and he was still asleep when Liv drove him home, another beer in the fork of her crotch, whiskey bottle in the glove compartment.
They dropped Paulie off, and Liv headed for Manhattan.
"Where are you going after you drop me off, Liv?" Laurie asked.
Liv handed her the whiskey bottle and Laurie put it back in the glove compartment.
"I gotta work tomorrow at nine, then I got class. I can't go back to the dorm, they fuckin' tossed me and I ain't told Pop, yet. I'm gonna go crash at my flop over Trivelino' Mac's."
"Tossed you outa college!"
"Naah. They tossed me outa the dorm."
"Hey, Liv, you're pretty drunk, and it's close to two. Why don't you stay here, tonight? I'm sure Ma wouldn't mind."
"Really? Thanks, Lar."
"Somebody hasta look after your crazy ass."
II: Sally
Life is a funny thing.
That was what was on Sally's mind, standing outside the building where Captain Metropolis was holding a meeting for the old gang and their successors, among them Laurie, attending her first meeting as a mask, until she got a load of Eddie, strutting in the door.
She heard the whistle and low hiss she was thinking come for directly beside her.
"Fuck me! Did you see that, Sally? I mean, did you see that? I need a fucking towel, hell I need a roll of fucking towels!"
"You mean Eddie? You've known Eddie your whole life!" Sally exclaimed.
All these years and she knew just what Liv was talking about.
"Yeah, but I never saw him in his costume before. And I'm all grown up now, ain't I? There it is, man! That is fuckin' it, that is Grade A motherfuckin' prime beef! Baby, where have you been all my life? You know I seen him about a zillion times, growin' up, but never in his costume. Shit! Lookit him, Sally. Lookit that big, mean, evil son-of-a-bitch. I wish that cocksucker up in the Bronx hadn't gut-shot my ass the other day, I'd have my legs around that mean motherfucker so fast and I'll be damned if I let him go while he had one drop of spunk left in his ten gallon balls. Shit. God- damn!"
That commentary came from Liv Napier, out of bed and in her costume two days after taking a bullet to the guts and walking a mile to the nearest hospital for treatment.
The Harlequin emitted something that was between a low chuckle and an animal growl, licked her lips, and clenched and unclenched her fists a few times.
"Shouldn't you be in bed?"
"Fuck, I don't need a goddamn bed. A wall will do." Liv snarled.
"Yeah. I know what you mean." Sally admitted.
Then she shook her head, as if she thought she was crazy.
Liv had that look on her face, that crazy look she got before she was about to do something awful.
Sally couldn't help but smile.
Be careful what you wish for, Eddie, because here she is.
"What if he didn't want you?"
Liv didn't hesitate before pulling one of her guns, and she smiled at Sally with wild, hard eyes glittering with insistent lust.
"In that case, I hope he likes it rough. He's lucky I'm hurtin'. Hell, what the fuck do I care if he doesn't want me? I'm the Harlequin, I take what I want. I'll sit on his cock and hold a gun to his head. Damn, I don't know what the fuck this is, this funny fuckin' feelin', and I don't know why I'm havin' it for a guy I've known all my life, but, fuck me, I'd do it, I really fuckin' would." She said.
And she meant it.
Sally couldn't help it, they both started to laugh.
III: Eddie
All the Comedian could think of the whole time he sat waiting for the meeting to start was "Round up the usual suspects."
They were all there.
Ozzy, smug and sanctimonious with an armload of charts, never missing a fucking opportunity to let you know he was smarter than you were.
The Boy Scout, looking earnest and nervous in his Saturday morning serial costume, and his buddy the Inkblot, who was probably the only one who had any sense.
And the Doc, with his poker face on.
He probably just wanted to go home and screw his old lady.
The Doc was funny that way.
He didn't give two shits about the material world, unless it came to fucking, and then, boy, was he interested.
She wasn't too bad, Eddie wouldn't have mind screwing her.
Hell, sitting on the couch drinking a beer and jacking off would have been better than wasting his evening with this shit.
And that old queer Metropolis, Nelly was a good name for him, he'd been bending over for that sado Nazi commie perv Hooded Justice for so long.
It was his little girl's first meeting as a superhero, though, and Laurie looked pretty and nervous and sweet with her makeup perfect and her hair pulled back in her shiny yellow and black costume that Eddie didn't like too goddamn much.
What the hell was Sally thinking? The kid looked like she was going to a sex show, not a street fight.
And what the fuck did Manhattan think he was staring at?
But she looked so excited to finally be doing her job it made the Comedian feel bad she was about to see what a big fucking joke it all was.
Ozzy and Nelly had their little display all set up, and Ozzy was about to begin his droning on, but they were interrupted by the door opening.
"Sorry I'm late. I took a fuckin' bullet in the guts a coupla days ago an' it was a real bitch tryna get my costume on."
The announcement in the contralto Brooklyn fuck you accent was followed by a rather spine tingling whiskey giggle that Eddie recognised.
When he lowered his paper he saw it was the Harlequin, Liv Napier, Laurie and Paulie's friend.
Out of the mask they called her Napalm, and she was a pretty wild kid.
Always had been.
Hell, she killed a man in self-defence when she was 11, and he had to tell her then to tone down her act.
Edie was always talking about her and so was Sal.
Liv did this, Liv did that, Liv's out of control. Paulie was almost in awe of her.
What did they expect?
Just because she was smart, and she was some kind of fucking genius and she wasn't falling apart, that didn't mean she wasn't going to go wild.
Eddie could tell when she was a little girl she was wild.
And nobody told the kid that it was teenage boys who were supposed to go through a phase where all they wanted to do was drink, fight, screw and tinker with cars, and if they had, she probably would have pulped their face.
In the costume, though, she looked less like the outcast version of your typical street tough out of Brooklyn, and more like a serious mask.
And she was a little crazier than you might expect.
For one thing, she was a little drunk, that kind of a little drunk that drunks were when the were as close to sober as they got, and if she was that much of a fuckin' drunk at 16, that was no good.
But the kid saw a lot of action. Unlike Laurie, it was obvious her costume, of coveralls and jump boots, although they were painted up like a jester's were not for show, they were for working.
You could tell by the two shoulder-holstered .45 autos and the machete strapped across her back that she meant business.
Even through the bright colors Eddie could see blood on them, and the kid had bullets hanging from her jester's cowl instead of bells.
Nice touch.
As the tough little broad strutted across the room, she passed behind his chair and she "bumped" into him, rubbing her sizeable tits across his back.
Where the hell did that come from in a kid that had been calling him "Mr. Blake" for the past sixteen years?
But, he wasn't her father, he was just her friend's uncle, it wasn't his problem.
Eddie looked up from his paper and the kid grinned at him, malevolently. Her eyes were hard and shiny with heavy lust and her very red lips wore the practised leer of a seasoned lecher.
Absently, her hand went inside the suit to touch the gun she wore in a shoulder holster, and she swallowed a laugh.
Was that a threat, or a promise?
Whoa, there, fella.
The kid was only 16, she was way too fucking young, when Eddie turned forty he quit screwing broads under 18; they were too much of a fucking headache.
And the kid, Jesus, she was a whole lifetime of headache, just ask her stepfather.
"You tryin' to knock my ass out with those things, kid?" he asked her.
"They gotta mind of their own, Mr. Blake."
"Siddown, kid. Ozzy's squawkin."
"Big fuckin' deal. Fuck him. I'm just tryna feather my nest in case they boot me outa the JLA. An' I gotta lotta respect for Nelly."
She sat down, slowly, holding her hand against her guts on one side.
"Did you really take a bullet in the guts two days ago, kid?"
"Yeah. I got it with a chopper. A fucking chopper. Well I was in the goddamn Bronx, yunno? Son of a bitch went right through the vest. Shit, it was a thirty-aught six, right? If I hadn't been wearing the vest, that woulda killed me. I'm gonna hafta go see my old man, see if he can get me a chopper of my own. You wanna see the bullet?"
She pulled a chain out from under her costume, a chain of dog tags, and there was another link attached to one of them, with a mangled 30/.06 caliber bullet hanging from it.
Kid had dog tags, which meant she had a government job.
"Who you with, kid?"
"The Doc."
"The Doc? What are youse, some kinda rocket scientist?"
"Yeah, actually."
Eddie laughed.
"If you two are finished, I'd like to continue." Ozzy told them.
The Comedian picked up his paper, again.
"Fuckin' Nazi prick." The kid muttered.
"You got that right, kid."
It didn't take Ozzy long to get on her case and the Bat's.
The first time she opened her mouth to try and explain to him the way things were in the street, where she was every day and he wasn't, Ozzy started out telling her that she wouldn't have ended up shot if her methods weren't more "brutal and draconian" than even her stepfather's were.
She had been trying to respond with something like interest and intelligence in his bullshit scheme, but after he got on her case, the kid pulled a flask out of her pocket and lit up.
"Drink?" she asked Eddie.
"Sure."
Scotch.
Good Scotch.
Well, her stepfather and her father were loaded, and she sure wasn't spending her money on dresses and make-up, why drink cheap booze?
"Thanks."
He passed the flask back to her as she responded to Ozzy's taunts.
"Don't bait me with twenty dollar words, Adrian. I'm just as fucking smart as you are, remember? Ask Jon. I work with him. Not for him. With him. And I'm only in my first year of college. You know what, Ozz-man? I might just be smarter than you are. And, by the by, just what have you done in the street, lately?"
Eddie chuckled.
The kid really got one in on Ozzy, the Nazi fuck.
"That's just it, Trivelino. That's where you and Bruce go wrong every time. Yes, the streets are where the crime is, but the best way to stop it isn't always to go out in them and engage any criminal you see. At least the Batman has methods and strategies. You just go out and hurt people."
The Harlequin laughed at him.
"Oh, I see. Wow, Ozzy, you are smart. Fight crime by staying at home, where it's safe. Fuck you. Don't you cast fucking aspersions on me and Batman because neither of us is as much of a pussy as you are." She said.
The Comedian laughed, sharply.
"That's just the kind of attitude that keeps you where you are, Trivelino." Ozymandias corrected her.
"Adrian, please. Let's not make this into a pissing contest. Liv does good work. So does Bruce. We all need to work together, no matter what our methods are." The Nite Owl entreated.
"That's okay, Dan. I got a bigger dick than Nazimandias, here, any day of the fuckin' week. So, my methods keep me where I an now? Well, where am I now? Oh, you mean as a trainee for the Justice League instead of hanging around in a rented firehall with a map from fuckin' P.S. 109 with pushpins in it? You bet your lily white chickenshit ass that I wouldn't lower myself to kick all over this place, it does."
"I think you had better leave, Trivelino."
The kid stood up, slowly, just like she was John Wayne, in a John Wayne movie, letting her chair scrape behind her as she planted her feet apart and her hands loose at her sides, like she was ready to go for her guns, or start throwing punches around.
She smiled, broadly, that old Jack Napier, have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight kind of smile.
"You wanna make me, Ozzy? Because I'm ready for you, baby. I was born ready. Let's go."
Yeah, Eddie recognised that mood.
When he was a young pup the kid's age, just getting into the mask game, he used to slip into it, a lot.
That restless kind of mood where you were really fucking horny, like a randy old junkyard mutt during a full moon, but yet you were pissed off, really pissed off, and if you couldn't find somebody to fuck so you could get to sleep that night, you'd just as well beat the shit out of the next asshole who tried you.
It was a real dangerous fucking mood, that was for sure.
That was when Nelly put his two cents in.
"Hey, come on now, the Nite Owl has a point. Let's not make this into a power struggle, here. We've got work to do."
Captain Metropolis successfully defused the situation, and the kid sat back down, looking disappointed.
She kept drinking, chain-smoking, muttering under her breath.
Real restless.
The meeting ended to Eddie's satisfaction, with him burning up Ozzy's cheap map and telling him to go fuck himself, and as Sally wasn't right on the spot, he had a rare chance to talk to his own daughter.
He and Sal had been doing their off-again, on-again dance for about five years, and she usually had him in the house only when Laurie was in bed or at school, and on the rare occasions he did see her, usually in the doorway when he was leaving or coming in, she paid him no mind, he was just some guy her mother occasionally went around with.
Eddie was just talking to her when Sal came running over to them like the Devil had just stuffed a hot pepper up her ass and hauled Laurie away and read him the riot act.
Eddie couldn't believe Sally would think he'd stoop so low as to try and pick up his own kid.
As he watched her car drive off, though, it dawned on him that Laurie wasn't just being nice to him, she was coming onto him.
That was an unpleasant thought, but even worse was Sally treating him like he was the kind of guy who would fuck his own daughter.
It had been one hell of a night, and Eddie was about ready to have an end to it.
He started walking to his car, but he was interrupted by a tug on the strap of his armor.
He turned around, and there was Liv.
She had gone a whiter shade of pale, and she was clutching one hand over her left side just under her belly.
"Hey, uh, Mr. Blake, you, ah, you didn't drive out here, did youse?"
"Sure I did. You got trouble, kid?" Eddie reminded her.
"Bad trouble. I think I burst a coupla stitches. I wasn't supposed to be outa bed, yunno, but this meeting was supposed to be fuckin important. Important, my ass! I was gonna wait here and hand that Nazi faggot prick his ass when he came out, but I'm in a real bad way. You think maybe youse could gimme a ride to the hospital? I'm bleedin' pretty bad, here."
The kid had the front of her costume partly unzipped, and she was sweaty and trembling, and Eddie could see blood oozing between her fingers, some of it was dripping from her pants leg down to her shoe.
"Jesus Christ, kid!"
Eddie was surprised the kid was even standing; she must have been pretty tough.
He was about to tell her so when her eyes rolled up to the whites and she stumbled blindly forward, and started to crumple.
He caught her, laid her down on the sidewalk, and started unzipping her boiler suit the rest of the way.
She was wearing am army-issue bulletproof vest and GI issue olive drab underwear beneath her costume.
What the fuck did this kid do?
As he was doing so, Adrain Veidt came out of the building.
When he saw the Comedian kneeling over the Harlequin's prone body, he dropped everything he was carrying and ran over.
Ozymandias was horrified, and he pushed the Comedian away from the unconscious teenager.
"What are you doing?"
Eddie would have punched him if he hadn't been trying to stop the kid from bleeding.
"Oh, hiya Ozzy. I was just gonna rape my ol' friend Jack Napier's teenage daughter I knowed since she's a little kid while she's bleedin' to death from a coupla burst stitches to the guts. Hold her down, she might wake up while I'm doing it! Quit askin me dumb fuckin' questions, an' try an stop that bleeding while I go to the phone box an' get some help!"
"Oh my God, she was telling the truth!" he exclaimed.
"Yeah. See this on her tags? That's the bullet."
"Oh my God."
"Nice goin', Ozzy. Real nice. Get a 16 year old kid with a hole in her guts outa bed to come to a meeting, then tell her she can fuck off because her old man's a psycho and her stepfather ain't much better and she ain't too tightly wrapped, herself."
"Don't berate me, Blake. Just call for an ambulance."
After calling for an ambulance and radioing the Bat from his car, Eddie returned to the sidewalk, sized up the situation and he took the unconscious young superhero's mask off.
She was a real pretty little thing, with red hair and fair skin, still looked more like her Ma than crazy Jack, and even though with the GI Issue underwear on, he could see she was built like a brick shithouse.
He could also see she already had a few serious scars and tattoos,
They grow up so fast.
"Why are you undressing her?"
"Because she can't go to the hospital in her costume, can she? Her father's comin' in his civvies, he's gonna bring her some clothes. Will you give it a rest, Veidt? Call me crazy, but I ain't turned on by a fellow mask bleeding to death in the street. I can see she's a pretty broad, I ain't blind, but I ain't gonna do anything about it, am I? Goddamn you, you're doing that wrong, she's bleeding all over herself. Move your fuckin' hands!"
The Comedian found a rag in the kid's pocket that he used to put pressure on the seeping wound.
"Goddamn kid is always in a bad fuckin' way. I pulled her out from under my basement steps at my sister's house when some guy stabbed her. She was just 11. Tryin' to run a pusher off her playground like she was Batman. Her an' Laurie. I hear alla time from my sister, from Sal, she's a smart kid, and a good mask, but she's trouble and she's wild. Her father's Crazy Jack Napier. She killed a man when she was 11 years old. What the fuck did they expect?" he muttered.
"I'm not saying she isn't. Intelligent. Good at her job. But you saw how she acted in there. Violent. Angry. Disrespectful."
"She's a teenager, Veidt. They're like that. Give the kid a fuckin' chance. She'll learn. I did."
Bruce came right before the ambulance and put some jeans on her and stowed away her costume, and after the kid was safe on her way to the hospital, Eddie got in his car and went back to his apartment.
He didn't realise he had the kid's blood all over him until he walked into his clean, well-lit kitchen, and even after he washed up and changed into his bathrobe and was sitting in said kitchen having a drink, he was still thinking about her leering at him and reaching for her gun, and the kid lying in the street, bleeding from a bullet hole in her guts.
Still calling him Mr. Blake.
The kid was crazy.
Mad, bad and dangerous to know.
And she was incredibly fucking young, too young.
Best to keep his distance.
Just be Mr. Blake.
Paulie's uncle.
Wait and see how the kid turned out.
***
The next Wednesday, around six, he stopped off at Grossmann's Diner to pick Sophie up, Wednesday was their night, and Max Grossmann was a real understanding guy of his crazy wife, and Paulie was there, as usual, with his feet up on his usual table, with Tony Donazio's kid, Skinny, and Big Benny was just taking over for his mother.
The door opened and the kid came in, in a pair of Levis and a combat sweater over her GI underwear.
She was still walking a little stiffly, but she was pretty much on the mend.
Eddie stopped her on her way over to sit with Skinny and Paulie.
"How you doin', kid?"
"I'm alright now. I been back to class and to work, an' I'll be back on the street next week. Back to see that Nazimandias son of a bitch."
"Whaddya mean?"
The kid looked both ways.
"Just between you an' me, Mr. Blake, I owe that sunnuvabitch! He can't talk about my Pop like that, an' get away with it. I'm gonna wear a pair of boots with a stacked heel, so I look taller, and gret dressed in black, strap my chest down, make my voice sound like a man's. Put my hair up and a ski mask on, and I'm callin' him out."
"Can you handle that, kid?"
She laughed, that Crazy Jack laugh.
"The woman ain't been born to give birth to the motherfucker who's ass I can't kick. Or at leats, give him a fuckin' run for his money."
Eddie went to the next meeting of the Watchmen, something he didn't usually do, and sure enough, Ozzy had a black eye.
"Any new business?" he asked, as the meeting opened.
"What happened to your pretty face, Veidt?" Eddie asked.
"I was attacked by a group of thugs."
Nobody but the Comedian and Ozymandias knew why the Comedian was laughing so hard.
The Devil made that kid, he made her in Hell, no doubt about it.