Warning! There is some swearing in this chapter! And it isn't even obstructed by x's and random punctuation symbols.
Equivocate
By Marz1
Chapter 2: Deed
Noun:
1. a signed and usually sealed instrument containing some legal transfer, bargain, or contract
2. something that is done, usually an illustrious act or action
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Tony Stark leaned into the three-dimensional rendering of his new shielded arc reactor, making small adjustments with a stylus. The new design was only about half as powerful as the iteration he currently used in his Iron Man suit, but if it worked out as planned, it would be completely invisible to heat and E.M. detectors. He was changing the angle on a reflector plate when Vision's big red-and-yellow face appeared only inches from his own.
Tony stumbled back out of the 3D projection field and tripped over a cord. His windmilling arms sent his mug of Alka-Seltzer flying across the room. After a moment, Tony realized Vision had added his image to the 3D projection, rather than just popping up out of the floor as he was wont to do.
For a being that claimed to be logical and driven by reason, Vision had a propensity for entering conversations via jump-scare. Tony thought it was statistically impossible for all of these encounters to be accidental. Could he mathematically prove he was being pranked by the android? Vision's voice derailed that train of thought, cutting off the chorus of Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A."
"Laura and Lila Barton have been kidnapped," he announced gravely.
"Who?" Tony asked, trying to keep his roiling stomach under control as his brain changed tasks.
"Clint Barton's wife and daughter," Vision said.
"Were they taken from their farm?" Tony asked, trying to recall how many kids had been there while the Avengers were hiding from Ultron. There was definitely more than one.
"No," Vision said. "The NYPD has just put in a request for information on them. They were taken at gunpoint from a shuttle bus by armed mercenaries. The last sighting of them was at 15:28 EST, at a parking garage at W 57th and 6th. I have taken the liberty of tracing Laura Barton's recent travel and communications. She was lured to New York under false pretenses, after emails to her husband were intercepted and decrypted."
"She was meeting Barton in New York?" Tony said. "Ballsy."
"She was led to believe that you would allow Lila Barton access to the Cradle to treat her cancer," Vision said, forwarding the hacked documents to Tony's 3D work display.
"Double fuck," Tony said.
The little girl had intraocular medulloepithelioma, and the treatment was basically to take the whole eye out before the cancer could spread. The Cradle might have been able to pull off the fiddly microsurgery required to remove the cancer and preserve the kid's eye, but the original Cradle had been destroyed when Thor used lightning to jumpstart Vision.
Dr. Helen Cho was working on a new machine, but it would be months if not years before it was built. Cho was slowed down not only by the injuries she'd received from Ultron, but also by Tony's demands that the new machine either regenerate or replicate nerves. Everyone involved in the project knew Tony meant for Rhodey to be the new Cradle's first customer.
Tony looked at the clock and scrubbed at his face. It was just past 5 o'clock. Laura and the kid might be out of the city by now. "Have we picked up any ransom demands for them?" Tony asked.
"No," Vision said. "But it is unlikely they would be communicated to us. Clint Barton's fugitive status is a matter of public record."
That also meant they could not use Avenger resources to find them, at least not without United Nations approval. Tony supposed they might be able to get permission if they sold the mission as a plan to steal bait for their own Clint-Barton-catching trap, but the lives of two people wouldn't jump this problem to the top of the approval committee's schedule.
Tony brought up the search programs he'd tasked with finding Clint and the other rogue Avengers. The man had last been seen in Italy three weeks ago, poking around an old Hydra safe-house. He thought of the burner phone Steve Rogers had mailed to him. He could put the ball in Steve's court, but that led to a whole host of other problems, the first being that if Steve did show up in New York, Tony was obligated to arrest him.
Tony activated the locator beacons that all the active-duty Avengers were now required to carry. Vision was still upstate at the Avengers' training compound. Rhodey was in Washington. Natasha's beacon failed to activate, and an error message appeared on the screen. It was just as well, since Natasha was in the Ukraine defending a politician from a "totally not Russian" assassin.
Honestly, Tony did not want to let Natasha know at all. She had somehow skated charges of treason after tazing prince T'Challa at a German airport, and Tony knew it wasn't for his sake that she had jumped through all the political hoops required to stick around. If this kidnapping, hostage situation, whatever it was, required her to betray the Avengers to save Barton's family, she'd do it in a heartbeat.
"I have located Laura and Lila Barton," Vision announced, cutting through Tony's downward spiral.
"What?" Tony asked.
Vision's face was replaced by security camera footage of Laura Barton, her daughter Lila, and an unknown man with a scarf wrapped around his entire head. They were walking down 10th street. Tony had been expecting to see the Bartons suspended over a tank of sharks or lava or something. There wasn't even a gun visible on the screen.
"Is this real time?" Tony asked.
"Yes," Vision said.
The view jumped to a camera across the street from the 15th precinct police station. Laura and Lila came around a building at the corner of the block. The man in the scarf was gone. The Barton women walked up the steps and entered the police station. They looked rumpled but unharmed.
"The cameras inside the station are not remotely accessible," Vision said.
"Do we have eyes on the scarf guy?" Tony asked.
"No, he has moved out of the range of the cameras I have access to. I cannot locate him." Vision said. "His body type and gait do not match any of the rogue Avengers," Vision added, anticipating Tony's next question.
Tony adjusted the satellite he usually tasked with monitoring Avengers Tower. Its cameras now focused on the 15th precinct. His A.I., Friday, would give him a heads-up if anything suspicious happened in the vicinity.
"Ok," Tony said. "That was 10 minutes well spent. They're rescued. They're under police protection. I should probably still do…something."
"Perhaps you should inform Secretary Ross," Vision said.
"Better plan," Tony said. "You tell Natasha what's going on, I'll make sure nobody grabs Laura and the munchkin from the 15th."
Vision did not outright say his own idea was better, but his stiff red face was unimpressed. After a judgmental pause, Vision nodded, and vanished from the 3D display. Tony hurried out of his lab to grab something business appropriate, and nearly fell on his face slipping in the spilled Alka-Seltzer. He scowled at the bubbling puddle as he shuffled out of the room. At least he had some warning his day was going to crap.
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The 15th precinct was crowded and smelled more than a little like pee. People were staring long before Tony set off the metal detector. The two cops manning the door exchanged looks, unsure where Stark stood in their chain of command.
"Maybe you should call your supervisor," Tony said.
One cop looked annoyed, the other looked awestruck. That was the usual mix of reactions he got from the police. Tony did not have much of an entourage with him, just Davis from Stark Industries security and Nygen from the legal department. Both men were armed, though more conventionally than Tony, and bore the required permits. Neither man was on the Avengers payroll.
"Why are you here?" the annoyed cop asked.
"Laura Barton," Tony said.
The awestruck cop looked confused. The annoyed cop picked up an ancient-looking phone that was wired into the wall.
"Somebody find Mahoney," the annoyed cop said.
Tony activated the snooping equipment in his sunglasses and pointed the microphone at the old telephone. Friday enhanced and amplified the other half of the conversation and fed it into Tony's earpiece.
"Two daytime rescues? The Devil must have insomnia," said the slightly distorted voice on the other end of the ancient phone.
"Not a rescue," Annoyed Cop said.
"Need an ambulance?"
"No, get Mahoney. Tony Stark is down here," Annoyed Cop said, sending Tony a glare.
"The Devil beat up Tony Stark?"
"No," the annoyed cop growled. "Stark's at the metal detectors with some bodyguards asking about the Barton woman."
"Mahoney's still in interview with her and the kid."
"Let him know anyway," the annoyed cop said, and then hung up. He gave Tony a challenging stare. "You can wait here for the detective in charge of her case, but you can't bring weapons into the station."
"I have permits," Tony said.
"I don't care," the annoyed cop said. "If you aren't a police officer, you don't bring a weapon in here."
"You could deputize me," Tony suggested.
The annoyed cop looked even more annoyed. Tony shrugged and handed off the dozen or so weapons he knew would set off the metal detector to Davis. Nygen did the same and sent Davis back to the car. Tony and Nygen made it through the second screening, and sat down on a bench to await the arrival of Mahoney. To kill time, he had Friday look up Detective Mahoney's records and forward them to his phone.
As cops went, Mahoney wasn't terribly impressive. He was smarter than average. He passed all his promotional exams, though he never got the top score. The only really stand-out thing about him was his integrity. Even when organized crime owned half the department, Mahoney didn't take bribes. He didn't get involved in cover-ups. He didn't lose or ignore reports that were inconvenient. He was the obnoxiously righteous guy that no one wanted to work with…except for the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, apparently.
Mahoney had a couple of famous collars, including Wilson Fisk and Frank "The Punisher" Castle, but there were notes that implied that the Devil of Hell's Kitchen had basically handed the men off to Mahoney. There were dozens of other mentions of people requesting to speak to Mahoney because "The Devil said he's an honest cop." There were even a couple of cases where the only thing the reporting parties could say in English was "Mahoney honest cop."
Tony had Friday compare the footage of the man with Laura Barton to news archive footage of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, aka Daredevil. Physically they were a pretty good match, but since most of the videos of Daredevil involved him jumping, flipping, and punching, and the man with Laura was just walking like every other boring pedestrian, Friday could not give him a high-probability match.
Did that mean Daredevil was working with Rogers and the others? Tony scrolled through dozens of pages of public records and media speculation, but he couldn't find any link between Steve Rogers and the mystery vigilante. The guy was just some kind of martial arts enthusiast who read too many comic books as far as Tony or S.H.I.E.L.D. had been able to tell. DNA from blood left at crime scenes told them Daredevil was a standard human, most likely of British or Irish ancestry. Maybe the vigilante and the Captain met in some kind of got-a-sunburn-while-drinking-bad-beer support group.
Tony frowned. Could Rogers still get sunburned? The super-soldier serum probably healed any UV damage quickly. Tony's stomach twisted, bringing his mind back from its tangent. He wondered if he should send Nygen for more Alka-Seltzer, or maybe Tums? The headache part of his hangover had vanished hours ago, but he still felt like he'd been kicked in the gut.
Tony checked in with his satellite, but nothing interesting had happened outside the police station, aside from his double-parked car getting a ticket from the meter maid. Tony had the A.I. double check all of Vision's hacking to see how the Bartons got caught out. Poking through the results of that killed another hour, but didn't get him much. After that he tasked Friday with getting into any nearby smartphones. Friday declared success just as a shadow fell over him.
"Mr. Stark?" a tall man in a cheap beige suit asked. Tony stuffed his own phone into his pocket so nothing incriminating would be seen. "Mr. Stark?" The man sounded a little annoyed, so he had probably called him more than a couple of times. Tony made his best I-am-paying-attention-to you face.
"I am he," Tony said, recognizing Mahoney from the picture in his files.
"If you want to talk, Interview 3 is open," Mahoney said.
"I don't really have anything to say to you," Tony said. "I'm here for Laura Barton."
"Mrs. Barton did not ask for you, and no one else here did, so I'd like you to have a seat in Interview 3, and explain how you ended up looking for her here."
Tony gave a put-upon sigh. "Lead the way."
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The Avengers never set foot in Hell's Kitchen. They had dropped more than a few spaceships on them during the Incident, but the Avengers themselves hadn't touched down. They sure as hell hadn't stopped by the local station to check in. Once in a while people from the 15th would get pulled in for traffic or security details in Midtown where the Avengers did public appearances for charity, but the superhero crap hadn't been near them for almost five years now.
Detective Brett Mahoney was worried the 15th wouldn't be standing by the end of the day.
Sgt. Lewis had passed him a note saying that Tony Stark had showed up at the desk, wanting to see Mrs. Laura Barton. Since she had been in the building less than half an hour, and no press had gone out, Mahoney was very suspicious.
"Let him wait, and keep an eye on him," Mahoney had said.
Mahoney didn't know much about the angst filled super-team breakup, despite his mother talking his ear off about how unfair everyone was being to Captain America. He did know Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye, aka that-guy-with-a-bow-and-arrows, had sided with Rogers and had a military warrant out on him because of it. Mrs. Barton and her family had been in hiding until, according to her, the need for a medical consultation forced her and her daughter to surface.
Laura Barton was an astoundingly normal woman; late thirties, dark hair with a few threads of gray. She had a bit of a tan, but it didn't hide the dark circles under her eyes. Her injuries had been photographed and treated. Forensics had taken her clothes as evidence and given her department-issue sweats to wear. She handled it all with aplomb. Her voice was tired, but didn't break as she recounted being abducted at gunpoint, being shot in the arm, and being marched into the sewers, with her daughter in tow.
Nothing about her screamed "I play house with a nut who shoots aliens with arrows," but Mahoney was pretty much convinced that major shit would have gone down, with the associated casualties, property damage and paperwork, had this woman and her child not been rescued. Stark lurking at the front desk probably meant disaster had not been entirely averted.
"Sorry Mrs. Barton," Mahoney said. "Where were we?"
"I think we've gone over most of it," Mrs. Barton said. "I couldn't see much of anything underground. I don't know where they were taking us, or how we got back. Mike just grabbed us and jumped and then we ran."
"And you never got a good look at this Mike guy?" he asked
"No, he wrapped his scarf over his face before we got to the light," she said. "He stopped us to get his sunglasses out of the jacket he'd loaned me, and I could hear him moving his scarf around, and then we climbed up a ladder and there were all these grates and I could see again, but Mike was all covered up, so there was nothing to see."
"Mike said I couldn't see his face 'cause he's very ugly," Lila Barton said, looking up from the crayons, ice cream sundae, and hot chocolate she was using to make a mess in the interview room. Lila seemed less than ruffled by the abduction and rescue, but maybe in 20 years her therapist would say different.
"He was a little scary at first," Lila continued. "Cause it was dark, but he could see okay, so we didn't get lost. I was hoping Daddy would come get us, but Mike was okay, even though he's smelly and ugly."
"I'm sure Mike's glad to have your approval," Mahoney said.
He was already 90 percent sure "Mike" was Daredevil, but he couldn't turn in a report saying that based on the phrase "Mahoney is a good cop." They'd probably get DNA off of the loaned jacket, which left Mahoney with dozens of other questions. A jacket and scarf weren't part of any outfit the Devil of Hell's Kitchen had been seen in. Was that his normal day wear? Was Daredevil just a homeless guy? Did this mean he lived in the sewers? Mahoney sighed.
"Alright," Mahoney said. "We've got your statement, and I think you're being straight with me about this whole thing, but the Feds and two dozen other agencies are probably going to want to talk to you, and ask the same questions I did. Also, Tony Stark is down at the desk. We haven't let him in, and we didn't call him. He says he wants to talk to you about something, but he's got no authority to butt in here. You say you came to New York at his invitation. Do you think he's involved?"
"The more I think about it, the less I think he's involved," Mrs. Barton said. "Stark doesn't think about the consequences of his actions with any kind of realism, but I don't think he'd hire people to come after us."
Mahoney nodded. "Alright. I'm going to have the sketch artist come in and you do your best to describe the men who took you into the sewer. I'm going to interview Stark, make sure he's not involved, and then you can talk to him if you want."
"I suppose I'll have to at some point," Mrs. Barton said, sounding resigned.
Mahoney could sympathize.
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Stark was as aggravating as Mahoney had feared. The billionaire offered to help the NYPD investigate, and when Mahoney explained the dozens of reasons why that would not happen, even if hell did freeze over, Stark went on a very self-incriminating rant about how the NYPD cyber crimes team would never be able to get into a Stark Industries system, much less the real kidnappers'. Stark's legal guy managed not to have a stroke, but it was a near thing.
After wasting an hour of everyone's time, Mahoney escorted Stark to the room where Mrs. Barton and Lila were waiting. The security camera was recording everything, just in case. Stark paused outside the door. Mahoney wondered if it was to steady himself, or rehearse some lines in his head.
"Hey Laura!" Stark greeted as he was waved in. "How's that tractor running?"
Mrs. Barton stood up and Stark flinched.
"What?" Mahoney asked.
Mrs. Barton also looked confused.
"You just had the look that women get before they slap me," Stark said, shrugging.
Mrs. Barton took a fortifying breath. "Did you talk to Clint? Did you tell him-"
"About the Cradle?" Stark asked.
Mrs. Barton looked hopeful, but Stark looked like a deer in the headlights.
Stark shook his head. "Vision got into your email after you were reported missing. I haven't heard from Clint since the Raft. The Cradle was destroyed. The new one is still just blueprints."
Mrs. Barton just nodded like she expected only bad news from now on.
"Do you know who set us up?" she asked.
"It wasn't me," Stark said.
"I didn't think you did this," Mrs. Barton said. "But since you've been in my email, maybe you know now."
Stark's legal guy was shooting him looks and eyeing the security camera, but Stark didn't hesitate to reply. Mahoney was glad they had plenty of tape.
"The messages came from random internet hubs in Europe accessed through public wi-fi spots and internet cafés," Stark said. "Did you see the guys…you know, when they grabbed you? Didn't you recognize any of them?"
"I'm not a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent," Mrs. Barton said. "I never was. Clint didn't bring work home."
"He didn't have pictures to put up for target practice on his archery range?" Stark asked.
"No!" Mrs. Barton said. "He didn't bring work home. The only time his world intruded on ours was when you and the Avengers showed up at our farm to hide from the killer robots you created."
Stark was opening his mouth to reply when a knock on the door interrupted.
"Devil came back," Sgt. Lewis said. "Left two guys in tac-gear in the parking lot."
Stark started tapping on his cell phone.
"You up for an I.D.?" Mahoney asked.
Mrs. Barton nodded.
"Better not bring the kid out," Lewis said. "Paramedics are on the way."
Lila Barton had fallen asleep across three chairs, wrapped in blankets and coats. It was obvious her mother didn't want to leave her, even in a building full of police.
"Take a couple of pictures of their faces and bring those back here," Mahoney said.
"One of them does have a face," Lewis said as he pulled the door closed.
"The Devil?" Mrs. Barton asked.
"He's a vigilante," Mahoney said.
"Who dresses up as the Devil," Stark added.
"I think he might be involved," Mahoney said.
Lewis returned a few minutes later and passed his smart phone to Mrs. Barton. Stark peered over her shoulder as she swiped through the images. Stark looked slightly queasy, which Mahoney found a little bit funny. Tony Stark had been "The Merchant of Death" for a lot longer than the Devil had been rearranging the faces of criminals. Stark's re-branded Iron Man persona wasn't any less prone to bloody high-caliber murder.
"Him," Mrs. Barton said, holding up the screen. "Him I saw. He never said anything to me. The other one…I can't tell. Do you really think Mike did that to him?"
Mahoney supposed the polite man who had rescued her and her daughter and brought them to safety didn't really jive with the bloody pulp in the pictures. Daredevil did have a bit of a reputation for chivalry, despite that not being P.C. anymore. Whenever women and kids were involved, the Devil dialed it back, at least until they had left the scene.
"We don't know that this Mike guy is the Devil of Hell's Kitchen," Mahoney said. "He could just be someone who knows him. The Devil is known on the street."
"And these men are both…going to make it?" Mrs. Barton asked.
Mahoney nodded. "They might wish they were dead the next time they see a mirror, but they'll survive."
Mrs. Barton ran her hands over her face again, her injured arm lagging slightly. "Can we leave? Can I get my things back from the bus? I need to book a flight home."
"I'd rather you stay until we get the all-clear from the Feds on this. We don't know if the rest of these men are still around. Finding them could take a while," Mahoney said. "And we will need you to come back to testify against the ones we do have."
"But that won't be for weeks, right?" Mrs. Barton said. "I need to take Lila home. She needs an eye operation…and it's not going to happen here."
"Hey!" Stark said. "We'll find her somebody in New York. You two can stay at the Tower."
"We can't," Mrs. Barton said. "Thank you for stopping by, Mr. Stark."
That was a dismissal if Mahoney ever heard one.
"I'll walk you out," Mahoney said to Stark, pointing at the door. Mahoney's gut told him Stark wasn't behind the kidnapping, but he would not have let Mrs. Barton leave with him, even if she had said yes. "I've got some calls to make, Mrs. Barton," Mahoney said. "If you need anything, Sgt. Lewis will be at his desk right outside."
"Thank you, detective," she said.
Stark refused to be hurried out the building, walking slowly and gazing around like a tourist, though he'd seen all the same things and all the same people on his way in.
"You think this Daredevil guy will come back?" Stark asked.
Of course he will, Mahoney thought. He'll be lurking under my desk or he'll pop out of the fridge in the breakroom or some damn thing.
"Don't know," he said aloud. "He usually doesn't hang around the station."
"But he's not going to go after Laura?" Stark asked.
"If Mrs. Barton tries to hold up a bank at gunpoint or jump an old lady outside the grocery store, there might be an issue. The Devil's pretty consistent at picking targets," Mahoney said. "I don't know what his opinions are on letting a killer robot army loose on the world, so I suggest you get back to your car and your tower as expediently as possible."
Stark scowled, but finally picked up his pace.
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Tony slid into the back of the town car. Nygen got in the front. Despite Mahoney's not-so-subtle hints that the local boogie man was going to get him, Tony wasn't worried. The car was Starktech, and in addition to being bulletproof, it could handle anti-tank mines, and should the vehicle end up falling off a bridge for some reason, it had an emergency air supply and was water-tight to a depth of 300 feet. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen would not be falcon-punching his way into Tony's car.
But if Daredevil was some sort of enhanced human, that could be another problem entirely. Tony checked on Friday's protocols, wondering how his A.I. had missed a man creeping around the outside of the police station in a devil costume. If the Devil could walk through solid objects like Vision could, or just plain turn invisible, Tony would cut Friday some slack.
"Back to the Tower?" Davis asked.
"Not yet," Tony said, pulling a water bottle and Alka-Seltzer out of the mini-bar in the back seat.
Tony turned on the projector on his phone, bringing up the stored satellite feeds. He focused on the 15th 's employee parking lot, going back about half an hour. The sun had set, so most of the footage was just a shadow dragging another shadow out of an alley into the lot, and then throwing something to get the attention of an officer trying to light up a cigarette. Tony overlaid the visible light images with his satellite's infrared cameras. The devil glowed yellow and red.
Tony watched the feeds again, adding city building plans and access tunnels to the view. The Devil had come up out a storm drain less than a block from the police station, and dragged two warm but unmoving bodies to the parking lot. He sometimes passed within three feet of another ambulatory person without getting noticed. Tony tagged the hot spot that was Daredevil and hit fast forward. The devil crawled up the side of the station and lurked on the roof until the two bodies were cuffed and carried to ambulances.
Tony expected him to scuttle back to the sewers, but instead the heat signature moved across the roof and down another wall, stopping above an open stairwell. The image caught up to real time. He was still there. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen was less than 100 feet away.
Tony looked at the case on the floor of the car. 20 seconds to put on the suit, and another 10 to fly to the far side of the police station. All that was missing was U.N. approval. He sighed. He'd have to let the regular police deal with it. He used the bug Friday had installed to track Mahoney's phone via GPS. Mahoney was already on his way to the stairwell.
"That's not suspicious at all," Tony muttered.
He activated the microphone in the detective's phone, routing the call to his own earpiece. He heard fabric moving and a repetitive metal clang as the detective walked up a metal staircase. A door banged open.
"You out here?" Mahoney asked, his voice buzzing and muffled by his pocket.
"Yes," someone replied, barely audible.
Tony tried to adjust the satellite, but it was too dark and there were ledges and fire-escapes in the way. He could still see the hot spot, though, lurking almost directly above Mahoney.
"You going by Mike now?" Mahoney asked.
"It seemed…less threatening," the other voice answered.
"Not being dressed as the devil probably did more for you on that count," Mahoney said, confirming Tony's suspicions. "Is something going on in the sewers I should know about?"
"I was making sure the Hand was gone," Daredevil said.
"Are they?" Mahoney asked, sounding angry.
"For now."
"Great," Mahoney said. "I take it those two you left for us weren't part of a ninja cult?"
"They're just mercenaries," Daredevil said.
"Are you going to drop off the other six?"
"I didn't find the others," he said. "By the time I got Laura and her daughter to the 15th, most of them were gone."
"How'd you get those two?"
"They got lost in the sewers," Daredevil said. "They split up to look for her and were left behind. They don't know who hired them. Their boss deals with that. His name is Andrew Walmanich. He doesn't go out in the field with them, doesn't take risks. They were working out of a closed retail building on the Jersey side of the Lincoln tunnel, but they were taking the Bartons to a boat, rather than returning there."
"And they just told you all this?" Mahoney asked.
Daredevil ignored the question.
"They've done this before," Daredevil said, his voice sinking into a lower register. "They take hostages for third parties, hold people until their clients get what they want. They don't get caught because they don't return the hostages, even if their families give in. He sounded proud that there were never witnesses."
Tony thought "he" referred to the man with the completely pulped face.
"Did you get the names of previous victims out of them?" Mahoney asked, pulling something out of his pocket. Tony hoped it would be his phone, so he could use the camera on it to get a good look at the Devil, but rustling and scratching told him the cop had taken out a notebook and pencil.
"A few," Daredevil said, and recited twelve names. Tony did a search of missing persons and found three matches.
"There were others," Daredevil growled. "But they couldn't remember all of them."
"Anything else I should know?" Mahoney asked.
"Stark is telling the truth," Daredevil said. "When he spoke to Laura, he said he did not hire those mercenaries, or invite her to New York to use that machine. He was telling the truth."
"And you didn't break all his fingers to get to that conclusion?" Mahoney asked. "Maybe punch him in the gut a few times?"
"I don't kill," Daredevil said.
"I didn't say you did," Mahoney said. "I'd have taken a shot at you a long time ago if I thought you did. I'm asking if I'm about to find an obnoxious billionaire beat black-and-blue on the steps of my station."
"The next person to beat Stark will kill him," Daredevil said. "He has an aneurysm forming in his hepatic artery. One serious blow to the abdomen or a night of heavy drinking and he will be explaining his actions to all his victims in person."
"If I ask you how you know that, is this conversation going to get freakier?"
"Yes."
"You wanna come down from there so I can arrest you?"
"No."
"Then please get the hell off of my building."
"Good night, detective."
Tony watched the hot spot drop off the side of the station and then suddenly swing over the building next door.
"Crazy bastard," Mahoney muttered as he went back inside.
Tony watched the dot darting across another roof and then through two more alleys before disappearing inside a warehouse. The building was too insulated for the satellite to see through. Tony stared at the screen and then at the Alka-Seltzer in his hand.
He supposed Daredevil could have seen him holding his stomach as he walked to or from the police station, and was now playing some kind of mind game, but he would have to know Tony was listening in. Tony had Friday run another sweep, but the bug on Mahoney's phone was running normally, and no unauthorized broadcasts were coming out of Tony's car.
A text from an unknown number appeared on Tony's phone.
[You looked unwell in the police station. Have you been to the doctor recently? My neighbor had a hepatic aneurysm, with very similar symptoms.]
Tony traced the call to a burner phone, and though he could not trace the purchase history of the phone, he could tell that it was inside the police station. He'd bet good money the awkward warning was from Mahoney. He supposed the mind game could have been between Mahoney and the devil.
But if it's a mind game, why does my stomach hurt? Tony thought.
"Sir?" Davis called. "The meter maid is back."
Tony looked up and saw a sour-faced woman glaring at the tinted glass. She could not see in, but as if sensing his attention, she pointed dramatically at a tow truck that was coming up the street. Tony was pretty sure that the civilian vehicle wouldn't be able to lift his armored sedan, but decided not to make more of a scene. He rolled down his window.
"You win this round," Tony said.
The woman did not look pleased by his concession. "The court date is printed on the ticket."
"I'll see you there," Tony said. "Wear something sexy."
Nygen made an unhappy noise, but the meter maid finally reacted. Tony wasn't sure if disgust was a better look for her than grumpy.
"Back to the Tower," he called.
"Yes, sir," Davis said.
Tony settled back in his seat. He had Friday call up a dozen Stark industries security specialists, and ordered them to keep a watch on the 15th, in case something happened with Laura and the kid. He blew out a breath, and had Friday call up his personal physician as well.
