Chapter 21: Professionals and Amateurs
November 21st
1:54 p.m.
Murdock watched his team as they prepared to leave. Hannibal was stowing the last of the weapons in the lockbox at the rear of the van. B.A. was nothing but a pair of denim-clad legs protruding from under the hood. Face was off in the distance, giving a proper farewell to the lovely lady who had hired them.
They'd been on the road for weeks on end, three missions in a row, and while everyone else was looking forward to some down-time, Murdock's urge to get home again was tempered by the knowledge that he'd finally have to come clean to the guys and ask for their help with his own not-so-little problem.
He threw two duffel bags behind the middle seats in the van and stared out the open rear doors, listening to the Colonel rearrange ammunition and trying once again to find a way to broach the subject, when he spotted a trail of dust in the distance that solidified into a line of olive green vehicles, tearing in their direction at high speed.
"Colonel!" He shouted loudly to get everyone's attention. "We've got company!"
Silver hair glinted in the sunlight as Hannibal's head shot up, then he quickly tossed armaments and ammunition into Murdock's outstretched arms and began shouting orders. B.A. slammed down the hood just as Hannibal closed the rear doors with a double thump and they were already moving by the time Face untangled himself from the lithe brunette and sprinted up. Murdock offered him a hand and yanked him into the cab just as the military police began tearing into the dirt lot and he squinted through the dust as he squeezed off several rounds into tires and engine blocks.
November 21st
2:18 p.m.
Face slammed the side door shut with a scowl and started a less-than-effective attempt to pat the dust out of his hair and off of his suit. "Hannibal, why is it that they always show up just as I'm starting to have some fun? Do you do this on purpose, call in the military just as we're getting ready to leave?"
Murdock was sitting with his right side against the back of his seat, setting safeties and stowing their weapons behind the duffel bags. He leaned forward and winked at his friend. "It's a twisted revenge for all the whining you do whenever Hannibal has us train."
Face shot him a dirty look and Hannibal grinned around his cigar as he reached into his pocket for a light. "Now, gentlemen, would I do something like that?"
All three of them glared good-naturedly at him and answered in unison. "Yes!"
Hannibal just smiled and turned back to watch the road and light his cigar, leaving them to draw their own conclusions.
A companionable silence descended as the smell of smoke wafted through the compartment and Murdock watched Face try to salvage his wardrobe and complain under his breath about the price of a good suit.
Murdock gathered his resolve and turned toward him.
"Face?"
"Yeah?"
"How much have you got stashed away for me?"
Face chuckled and concentrated on the dirt coating his left sleeve. "I'm not telling, you'll blow it all on video games."
"Is it enough to hire the team?"
Face paused, looking concerned, and turned toward him while leaning forward in his seat to close the distance between them. "Why would you need to hire the team?"
"There's this guy at the V.A. Mean ol' mudsucker the size of a house."
"Sounds like B.A." Face grinned at the back of their driver's head.
Murdock tried to keep his voice low. "B.A. would never try to electrocute a patient."
Hannibal slid the lighter into his jacket pocket and turned to look over the back of his seat at them and Murdock saw B.A.'s eyes meet his in the rear view mirror before sliding back to the road.
"Something you want to tell us about, Captain?"
Murdock looked uncomfortable and swallowed hard before answering. "I've got a friend down at the V.A. that this orderly has been getting into it with." As he filled them in on the tale of The Mammoth he watched their expressions carefully, wincing slightly as he heard B.A. grumble something about 'picking on helpless fools' but continuing on. He included all of the pertinent details, omitting only the fact that it was he, himself, that was the focal point of the bouts of retaliation.
As he finished, Hannibal puffed on his cigar and then cast a glance at the van's other occupants. "Sounds like this one'll be fun, B.A." His voice held a hint of teasing. "So close to home that you won't even have to fly." B.A. growled menacingly at him as the older man turned his blue eyes on Murdock appraisingly and his tone once again became business-like. "A little too close to home for you, Captain. I think we'll have you sit this one out, the three of us will have a talk with this orderly, straighten him out for you. Tell your friend not to worry about the fee," he watched Face start to object and silenced him with a look, "we'll call this a favor for a friend."
Murdock took a deep breath and released it slowly. "My friend and I appreciate it, Colonel."
Face leaned back in his seat, fidgeting with his cufflinks and looking petulant. "Well, another charity event. You know, Hannibal, we keep this up and we're going to be standing in line at a soup kitchen before much longer."
Hannibal drew on his cigar and smiled at Face, who crossed his arms and pouted slightly in return. Then he turned his gaze on Murdock, contemplating, brown eyes and blue communicating silently before the pilot dipped his chin in a slight nod and Hannibal blinked once in understanding. Turning back around to face the road that stretched out before them he struck up a conversation with B.A. about their route and arrival time in L.A.
Murdock smiled as he started teasing Face good-naturedly, finally allowing the tension he'd been carrying since his last encounter with The Mammoth to slowly dissipate.
November 23rd
11:13 a.m.
Murdock sauntered into the psychiatric ward, the knowledge that things would soon be put right making him happy to be home for the first time in far longer than he cared to admit. He tossed a wave to the man at the desk.
"Hey, flyboy, welcome back."
"Mornin' Mackie, I miss anything exciting?" he asked, sidling up to the station and snatching two pens from a coffee cup to start tapping out a beat on the desktop.
"Damn straight you did, we've been running our asses ragged all week. The big guy's gone."
Murdock's head whipped up and his eyes widened, impromptu drumsticks forgotten. "The Mammoth?!?"
Mackie laughed. "I still think it's hilarious that you guys all called him that. Yeah, he's outta here."
They'd just gotten back to town, there certainly hadn't been time for Hannibal to implement whatever plan he'd concocted. "I'll be damned." he responded. "Who'd he finally piss off enough to get sacked?"
"Nobody. He stormed in here a few days back madder than hell. Said that in the last few weeks his car had been broken into twice and then, the night before, someone broke into his house while he was at work and trashed the place. Started hollering about how shitty his neighborhood was and that he was moving back to his old stomping grounds where he didn't have to deal with assholes who got their kicks out of fucking with people."
Murdock slipped the pens back into the cup and shared a sneer with the other man. "Well, that's the pot callin' the kettle black."
"Tell me about it. Oh, and you've got mail." Mackie reached behind the desk and pulled out a large heavy cardboard box, handing it over. Murdock peeked inside and couldn't suppress a smile. "It's that time of the year again, huh?"
The pilot chuckled. "Yup, won't be long before I'm gummin' my jello just like Behl."
Mackie laughed. "Have a good day, flyboy."
Murdock straightened up, hefted the box into his arms, and shot the man his most dazzling smile as he headed toward his room. "Mackie, I'm havin' the best day ever."
November 23rd
11:21 a.m.
The box slid from Murdock's arms onto the mattress and he reached in to pull out the piece of paper that was resting on top of the contents.
I don't suppose you'll actually wait until tomorrow to open these. Enjoy. ~Us
Like some twisted cousin of a Matreshka doll the larger box contained another heavy box, this one badly wrapped in bright green butcher paper, barely held on with copious stretches of scotch tape that were occasionally marred with small fingerprints. One end had already been carefully sliced open by the staff at the V.A. and he upended it onto the bed.
Dozens upon dozens of comic books spilled out, some sliding onto the floor in their mad rush to escape, ranging from nearly mint condition to folded and dog-eared pages, a couple even missing their covers. Among them were two more parcels, one small and one relatively large, and another card. He extracted the card first and smiled at what was carefully written in child-like block lettering.
WE TOOK UP A (here a word was scribbled out and carefully re-written) COLLECTION, HOPE YOU LIKE THEM. ~THE KIDS
PS: THE 'BIG GUY' SAYS TO TELL YOU IT WASN'T HIS IDEA.
He stood the card from B.A.'s Youth Center on his nightstand along with the first note and turned his attention to the two smaller packages. One was tiny, elaborately yet tastefully wrapped, and he found the open seam and slid out a black box. It was hinged and he flipped it open impatiently and took the item within into his hand to inspect it.
The lighter was metal, heavy in his palm, etched silver glinting slightly in the wan sunlight that struggled through his window. On one side the design was raised, a Mustang P-51 Series aircraft emblazoned on the metal. "Well, hello there beautiful." he whispered and struck the flint experimentally.
There was a small spark but no fire. "Yup, bastards bled you out. Couldn't have the crazies playin' with fire, could they?" He patted it gently. "That's okay, we'll get somethin' tasty inside you the next time Face drops by." Pulling a small card from the box he started to laugh as his eyes scanned the precise lettering.
Yeah, I know, I'll bring some soon. ~F
He put the lighter back into its box reverently and set it with his collection of cards before turning his attention to the final package.
The wrapping was simple, plain white paper that crinkled at the opened edge. He grasped the two items inside and slid them out, smiling at the topmost of the two whose cover showed an aircraft in flight, propeller blurred slightly against the red-painted nose. "P-47 Thunderbolt At War" he read aloud, and then slipped the first book behind the second. "Air Power - A Modern Illustrated Military History." He nodded appreciatively and then flipped through both quickly, looking for a card.
No card was forthcoming, although half-way through "Air Power" he discovered a glossy though slightly worn sheet of paper, folded into fourths and tucked between the pages. He unfolded it gingerly, noting that the creases were definitely not recent. His grin broadened as he realized that he held in his hand a page from a magazine from the 1940's adorned with a leggy brunette reclining on a non-existent background smiling up at him.
"First printing of a Vargas Girl. Hannibal, where did you even find this?" He smiled at the empty room. "Food for the mind and the soul, sounds just like you Colonel." He carefully refolded the image and tucked it back between the pages, setting the books aside for a moment as he contemplated the explosion of comics on and around his bed. "But first, I think I spy me some food for my inner child." He picked up an issue at random, cleared off a small corner of the mattress, and planted himself cross-legged on the bed as he began to read.
November 24th
1:14 a.m.
The night air was crisp but Murdock's smile was warm as the figure hauled itself over the ledge and onto the rooftop.
"Hey, stranger, long time no see." he greeted.
For a change of pace he wasn't greeted with a scowl but instead with an evil grin. "There you are, I was starting to think you'd been abducted by aliens or something."
"Nah, that only happens in the summer when visibility's better."
She tossed him her backpack and set to work on the padlock. "Come with me, there's something I want to show you."
Murdock slipped the pack onto his own shoulders and helped her haul the metal cover up, then descended the ladder first so that she could secure the lock behind them, but when they both reached the bottom and he started to slip it back off she held up a hand and then hoisted herself into the crawlspace, motioning for him to follow.
When they reached the end of their crawl and dropped into the room below she felt blindly until there was a click and the room was bathed in a sickly yellow light from a small desk lamp that was clipped to the door of the electrical box. There was barely enough room for the both of them in the bolt-hole and he finally handed over the heavy pack, watching her dump it unceremoniously between the the coffee maker and the wall of file boxes. "So, what's the special occasion?" he asked, trying not to step all over her pile of blankets.
She ignored the question and instead nudged one of the boxes at the bottom of the stack with her toe. "There's some interesting stuff in these, you know."
"What's in 'em? Looks like old paperwork."
"Lots of old paperwork. Old medical records. Charts. Reports. Transcriptions of therapy sessions for patients that haven't even been here in a decade. The really fun stuff's up front near the door, though. Things get a lot more recent as you work your way forward."
Murdock looked nervous. "You been readin' up on me?"
She smirked. "A little. But the best thing I found was this." She pulled a file folder out from underneath the coffee maker and handed it to him.
He took it, looking apprehensive, then flipped it open and scanned the contents, a brilliant smile lighting his face. "This is The Mammoth's employment application."
"Yup."
He smirked back at her. "Including his home address."
"Yup."
"Ness, sweetheart, why do I get the feelin' that you've been a naughty girl?"
She grinned in the dim light. "Well, I have to get my kicks somehow."
"You're the one who trashed his place, aren't ya?"
"Heard about that, did you? I did more than trash his place, I messed with his tiny little mind."
Murdock slid himself down and settled into the pile of comforters. "Oh, I can't wait to hear all about it."
"Well, I started small. Didn't want him to get him too riled up since it didn't sound like he's the kind of guy who would win any prizes on a good day. I'd been trying to think of something that would really put a crimp in his day but that wouldn't immediately make him think you'd had something to do with it."
He tipped her a nod. "Appreciate it."
"My first thought was to mess with that roller skate of a car he hauls himself around in. Unfortunately, pulling anything while it was here in the parking lot would have been too obvious, and it's not like I've got a car of my own that I can hop into and trail him home with."
She nodded once at the file folder in his hand. "Then I found that. I had actually dug into the more recent boxes to see if I could find anything on him we could use, and suddenly his home address practically falls into my lap. I couldn't resist the temptation. The first evening I hung out in an alleyway down the street from his place until he got home, waited for a bit to make sure he wasn't coming back, popped the lock on the car door and swiped a cassette case with bunch of tapes he had in there."
Murdock shook his head. "Amateur."
"Oh, I'm not done yet. I spent the whole next day hunting through thrift shops and buying up the worst cassettes I could find. Self-help tapes, Gregorian chants, easy listening. Anything that screamed, "He would HATE this!" ended up going home with me. Then I took a screwdriver, popped open the tapes I'd swiped from him, yanked out what was inside, replaced it with the innards I pulled out of my thrift-store binge, and superglued the cases back together."
"Oh no. You didn't."
She crossed her arms over her chest and looked proud of herself.
"The next night I showed up in front of his house around four in the morning, when I knew he'd be out cold but it was still dark, and popped the lock on the door again. I buried the case, full of doctored tapes, under some of the garbage that was spilled all over the back seat."
She chuckled evilly. "I truly wish I could have hung around to see his face when he found them, figured he'd just misplaced them the day before, and gone to pop one into his tape deck. He'd be expecting heavy metal or something and would suddenly find himself listening to some guy telling him how to lose weight through hypnosis."
Murdock's grin was huge. "Damn, I'd have paid good money to see that."
"Yeah, me too. Still, I have to say I'm proudest of the next thing I did." She mimed polishing her fingernails on her shirt. "It had to be my crowning achievement."
"When you broke into his house?"
She snorted. "Not much of a house, more like a rat-hole. I may live in some weird places, but at least I try keep them tidy. He was living in a one-bedroom apartment, tiny little thing. The kitchen looked like something had exploded in it, smelled so bad I almost tucked tail and ran. Living room was hideous. He had a huge entertainment center taking up an entire wall, and a couch that looks like someone's grandmother had given it to him pushed right up in front of it. The rest of the room was buried, literally buried, in empty beer cans and bottles, had to be two feet deep, the only place you could find the floor was along a little path he'd cleared that started at the front door, passed in front of the couch, and branched off at the end so you could get into the kitchen and the bedroom."
Murdock wrinkled his nose. "I don't think I even want to know what the bedroom looked like."
"Neither did I. I only opened the door once, to make sure no one else was home, and I did my best not to identify anything in there."
"Smart girl."
She nodded. "Of course, having seen the state of his car, I came prepared, so I unloaded by backpack and went to work."
"First things first, the kitchen." She gestured grandly. "Picture me there, surrounded by filth and decay, pulling up a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves as far as they'll stretch."
"What'd you do, vengefully wash his dishes?"
"I scrubbed that entire place top to bottom. Plates, glasses, cookware with what must have been the remains of his last half-dozen meals seared into them. Scoured the countertops, sterilized the fridge, filled four giant garbage sacks with trash."
Murdock was staring at her with his eyebrows up. "Why?"
"C'mon, you know this guy. If I had gone in and trashed the place, he'd probably never have noticed. If I'd swiped all his stuff he'd have called the cops and someone might have remembered me coming or going. What's he going to do if he comes home and finds everything spotless, call the police and report an unvandalization?"
Murdock nodded, realization dawning. "And I'll bet it put him on edge more than anything else ever could have."
"That's just the beginning."
"You had time to attack a bomb-site of a kitchen and still do more? How long were you over there?"
"Seven hours." She shrugged. "The guy works from ten in the morning until ten at night. It's not like he was going to walk in on me and given the state of his home I doubted he had a live-in girlfriend."
Murdock leaned forward. "What next?"
"Grabbed an empty garbage bag and started hauling cans and bottles into the kitchen. I was half-tempted to just take them all with me and cash in the deposits, but I figured that I'd look a little conspicuous walking out the door trailing a half-dozen garbage sacks full of returnables. Instead I rinsed them out, filled them again about halfway with water, and started stacking them into two of the corners of the living room, one giant pyramid for bottles and one for cans. The bottle pyramid only made it halfway up the wall, but the cans got all the way to the ceiling and stretched about four feet into the room. It was great, I felt like I was on vacation in Egypt by the time I was done."
"And he had the gall to always harass DeRane for change."
"Well, I think we established long ago that he was an asshole. So, at this point, I'm starting to get bored, so I give the living room a once over and am almost out the door again when I decided that the best things in life come in threes. I had to do one more thing."
"And what, oh evil schemer, was that?" he asked with an appreciative twinkle in his eyes.
"I reached back behind the entertainment center, unscrewed the cable, bent that little prong in the middle so it wouldn't line up any more, and screwed it back on as far as it would go. Our boy wasn't going to get anything except the local news and Jesus TV on his rabbit ears when I finished, and I don't think he was smart enough to be able to figure out why."
Murdock was laughing with his hands clasped over his mouth, trying to keep quiet so the sound wouldn't echo through the vents, and he made a hilarious amalgam of heaving chest, muffled chuckles, and a loud wheezing as he pushed and pulled air through his nose in uneven bursts.
She grinned evilly. "So, still think I'm an amateur?"
He finally pulled his hands away to reveal a huge grin. "I can't believe you did all that for me."
She looked down and shrugged. "It was easier than trying to find you a birthday present."
He pretended to look at her sternly. "You have been reading up on me."
"Information is power. Why, do I make you nervous?"
"Makes me wonder what else you know about."
She looked innocent. "Just a few odds and ends."
He shook his head and chuckled again. "Sweetheart, I'm just glad you're on our side."
Author's Notes:
I was asked to include a cameo by the other members of the team, so there you go! I'm not as good at writing the rest of them as I am Murdock, but hopefully it came out alright.
I was going to have Ness cut his brake lines or something (c'mon, the bastard would have deserved it), but I realized that the last thing either of them needed was cops snooping around. Besides, this was a LOT more fun to write!
Once again, I know next-to-nothing about flight and airplanes, but an internet search turned up a good-sized following for the Mustang P-51's (a fast, well-made, highly durable long-range single seat fighter that began production in the early 1940's and has since been used extensively in civilian circles for air racing) and I thought that it would be something that would make Murdock smile. The titles came up while I was looking for books on air tactics that would have been published by 1984 and they caught my eye.
I don't believe they ever disclosed anyone's birth dates on the series, so I cheated and used Dwight Schultz's, which is November 24th.
Coming up next: Some more indecipherable dialogue for you Behl fans out there.