Updating today, not the 5th. Not doing something like that right before the midterm elections. Vote, my fellow colonial heathens. There's a lot riding on this one.
I got about two-thirds the way through my October writing goals, as in, I didn't finish chapter 26. I got stuck and then I got... consumed by other ideas. It happens. I'm used to it. I'm giving NaNoWriMo a more spirited shot this year, so I'm probably going to lurk more than usual.
Chapter Ten:
Martin LeBeau walked out of jail thanks to a decent lawyer and a rotten judge.
Crooked judges were hard to find in a city like this one. Metropolis had always been too straight and narrow, believing in the integrity of the law and upholding justice. It was like there was a tacit agreement between law enforcement and the court system to either out-do or be an example to its sister city Gotham. But when you ran in the same circles as Martin LeBeau, it wasn't difficult to find a judge who could swayed by a couple hundred dollars, nor was it difficult to find a lawyer who was as blood-sucking as they came.
So despite de-frauding several construction companies out of thousands of dollars, LeBeau walked the same day of his appeal.
(Miss Goldie Gates, the other person who had tried to de-fraud the growing West River, hadn't been so lucky. She had gotten Judge Hilton, the straightest shooter in the entire court system. She was looking at five years up at Stryker's Women.)
LeBeau had spent the week living an apartment he was renting from a friend who owed him a favor or two, and simply enjoying his freedom. Even just nine weeks in jail was enough to make a man appreciate the simple comfort of not showering under supervision.
The package arrived less than an hour after he'd become a free man. It had contained a brand-new phone and instructions to text a code to a number that LeBeau suspected was a throw-away. He had texted the code and within five minutes, he had received details about a job suited for a man of his talents and needs. The number remained blocked, which naturally made LeBeau suspicious. He didn't like communicating with people who with-held their names. He wouldn't have survived as long as he did without having a healthy dose of suspicion.
But the promised payment was enticing. More money that he would have made knocking over construction companies.
His new client was obviously a man of means.
One didn't upset the men of means.
The second text had come after he'd accepted the offer, giving him a time and a location and a brief description of the item his client wanted him to retrieve. He had a week to get everything in order that needed to be put in order. The item was to be stolen late Friday night and delivered to the drop point before dawn. The method of retrieving the item was left up to him, but discretion was advised.
There came no other texts after that, but LeBeau needed no more instructions. He prided himself on being automous and acting independently. He had been contacted due to his reliability when it came to getting the job done.
Nonetheless, when it came to breaking and entering and other forms of sneaking around, LeBeau was man enough to admit that he wasn't the best. His tactics had always been forward charges and brute force.
So early Friday evening (as Lois Lane made plans to sneak into Atlas Industries with Clark as her accomplice), LeBeau made his way up the streets of Metrodale. It was a vile neighborhood in many respects. The streets were lined terraced houses that seemed to sag into one another, in such states of disrepair that they would have ached something terrible if they'd been living beings. Windows were boarded over and porches were barred and locked. Bricks had fallen out of the walls and the dusty paint was peeling off the outsides in great swathes. There were many properties that were up for sale or for rent, but many more were just empty. LeBeau could hear rattling air conditioners desperately trying to cool the interior of the houses. If not air conditioners, then box window fans struggling to do the same.
Here and there, children sat on the steps and sweated, some bearing the look that suggested they had been ordered to go outside, but also had nowhere else to go. LeBeau couldn't help eyeball them cautiously. In his experience, Metrodale's children came in one of two flavors. Either they were affliated with a gang and knew when they were supposed to keep their mouths shut, or they were talkative little whippersnappers with no sense of self-preservation and no one bothered to teach them when to shut up. And they were typically the children who hung around their doorsteps, waiting for something interesting to happen.
Frankly, LeBeau didn't trust children until they were thirteen. By then, they knew staying quiet was good for their health.
Metrodale was the last proper haven of crime in the City of Tomorrow. It wouldn't do to have anyone mouthing off.
LeBeau's destination was a house once painted fire-engine red, but now it was more of a rusty blood-like color. Its front porch was filthy with leaves shed from the nearby tree, having not been cleaned off in several years. He went up the front steps carefully. He remembered, the last time he was here, that one of the steps had been missing a support and therefore had wobbled quite alarmingly. On the next porch over sat one of those little buggers that LeBeau disliked so much.
The little weedy boy had unfortunate red hair and quite an infestation of freckles all over his face and down his limbs and a chinky sort of look around his eyes. His legs were skinned and scraped between his knees and his ankles, as if he had taken a bad fall. Recently, as the scabbing still looked quite fresh. His eyes tracked LeBeau's progress up the steps.
"What you lookin' at, you little bastard?" he snarled, his New York accent coming through thickly.
The kid hastily looked away and busied himself with dabbing at his skinned legs with a damp cloth (probably because his mother wasn't around to do it for him). LeBeau nodded to himself and reached up to knock on the door. This was the current home of the Miller brothers.
The Miller brothers were a pair of twins identical down to the very placement of every freckle. They weren't terribly handsome, sporting large overbites and bushy eyebrows enhanced by a jutting brow-line and a sloping forehead. Their shoulders hunched forward to round off the image of temporally-displaced cavemen.
He didn't know which one of them answered the door. LeBeau had never quite bothered to learn their names; he was never able to tell them apart anyways, no matter how often he had worked with them. He was usually able to keep track which side the brothers stood on. The elder twin usually stood on a person's right while the younger hovered on the left.
"Hey, hey, it's one of my favorite pals!" LeBeau crowed.
"Marty!" Miller the Elder face broke into a huge grin. "C'mere, ya little shit!"
The big, burly man clamped LeBeau into a spine-cracking hug and half-dragged him across the threshold into the slightly dingy house. It smelled like dry-rot and unwashed laundry. A television played loudly in the background and there was a heavy thud of footsteps as Miller brother number two hurried over to see what the noise was about.
"Hey! It's Marty!"
LeBeau was released from one brother to be swept up by the other. The second hug was just as spine-cracking. This was the only thing LeBeau didn't like about the Miller brothers. They were strong and they hugged indiscriminately. And they knew how strong they were, but they still hugged indiscriminately.
"They let you walk?" Miller the Younger inquired, looking the smaller man up and down. "You got busted for fraud. That's a good five-ten years in this town."
LeBeau shrugged. "I had a good lawyer and a worse judge."
Miller the Elder thumped him on the back and laughed. "Those are two types that are hard to find! C'mon, we got some beer in the cooler. Have one and get off your feet, enjoy your freedom! How long have you been out?"
"A week already. I been laying low." LeBeau said. "I also got a job. An' I want your help."
The twins shared a look, long and questioning, then they nodded to each other. LeBeau allowed himself to be led into the living room. If nothing else, the Miller twins prided themselves on being hospitable to their favorite guests. Extreme motor-cross was being broadcast on the television and there was pizza on the couch, a cooler of decent micro-brew on the floor. The twins chivvied him onto the couch and made him get comfortable before they let him talk some more.
"So what's this job you got?" Miller the Elder inquired.
"It's a good deal an' you boys look like you ain't got your hands on some real dough in a while." LeBeau observed. The brothers didn't appear to be hurting for money, but if they were down to renting one of the squalid Metrodale homes rather than one of the nicer places south or east, then they weren't doing as well as they would have preferred.
"Business been moving out." Miller the Younger admitted, throwing an empty can into the bin. "Ever since Superman rolled in, all the usuals dried up. No one wants to do business in a town where a guy can see through walls."
"Yeah, dude calls the police with tips like every day." the other twin added, shaking his head in dismay.
"Then I can getcha the hell outta dodge. Fifteen grand, each. That's just to start. I can go higher." LeBeau offered. His client was dishing out exactly five million for the item; two million up front and the rest upon delivery. LeBeau was starting to wish he knew exactly what the client wanted, if the man was willing to put out so much money for it. But discretion had kept LeBeau alive.
"How high?" Miller the Younger asked.
"How high you wantin'?"
Miller the Younger gave him a discerning side-eye while his twin tapped his fingers on the pizza box. Neither twin looked at each other, but in silences like these, LeBeau always had the feeling they were communicating somehow.
"Six hundred thousand in total." Miller the Younger said at last.
"You boys got some plans?" LeBeau wondered. That was a pretty hefty sum, even for the brothers. They were cautious about accepting large sums of money, as it took a while to launder it through legitimate businesses.
"Yeah, we've been eyeballing some sweet real estate on the Gulf Coast. Ten grand on the down payment." Miller the Elder explained, grinning in anticipation. "Time to get the hell outta Metropolis anyhow."
"Ahem." LeBeau agreed. He took his new phone out and tapped in a series of instructions. He was pulling money out of his bank account and transferring it to the brothers'. "Three hundred thousand up front. It'll be viable in twenty-four hours."
Miller the Elder blinked. "Seriously?"
"Seriously paying you an advance." LeBeau nodded.
The twins grinned at each other and leaned forward with greater interest.
"So what we helpin' you swipe, Marty?" Miller the Elder wondered.
"I don't actually know, but you know how that works." LeBeau said, shrugging. "Now I got an inside man so don't worry about the methods of getting in. I'm just worried about the security. That's why I want you two boys. Tonight, we're breaking into S.T.A.R. Labs."
Miller the Younger whistled. "Tall order. They got some weird crap up there."
"Yeah, could be anything you after." Miller the Elder said.
"Don' worry, we ain't goin' after anything alive. We just need a van or a truck and we're golden." LeBeau explained. "Like I said, I got an inside man. He'll get us into the store room and back out. It's the security that might come after us if we get caught in the act. I don' want a fire-fight or... y'know, Superman."
The twins nodded in agreement. Superman had been making things difficult for legitimate criminal business. He didn't actively bust their chops, but he tipped off the police to the hotspots. It was hard to do business when the police came knocking on the door with the observations of "concerned citizens" and stuck around keeping an eye on things. The police in this town couldn't be bribed or otherwise bought off. They believed too hard in law and justice and order to let a few twenty dollar bills distract them.
"So your man can get us in?" Miller the Elder asked.
"Wouldn't have asked if he couldn't. He owes me a favor." LeBeau confirmed. "Now we ain't gotta roll out for another couple of hours, so what say we just chill until then?"
"Hell, sounds good to me." Miller the Younger settled back into the couch cushions comfortably and closed his eyes. "Wake me up when it's time for us to go."
LeBeau settled back as well with another slice of pizza and chewed it with great relish. He had spent much of his adult life so far scraping out a living in fraud scams. It had actually been rather fun watching how many people he could dupe out of their money.
But now there was Superman and his little reporter girlfriend nosing their way into all sorts of places and causing trouble for everyone. It wasn't worth it to keep running scams when a town had people like them running around.
One more job here for LeBeau and by Monday, he would be five million dollars richer and living on a warmer coastline where no Superman could find him.
S.T.A.R. Labs was the mecca for egghead scientists around the world. It had been founded by three of the biggest eggheads in recent history, who had decided that there needed to exist a laboratory that was unaffiliated with any business or with the military. It was their mission statement, that they would never align themselves with any single cause.
S.T.A.R. Labs existed for the betterment of all mankind, not just a small fraction of it.
At sixty-five thousand square feet, the Metropolis facility was the smallest of the existing three, but it was only a relative term in comparison to the Central and San Francisco branches. The total square footage didn't include the parking lots or the out-buildings or the undeveloped empty lots.
Miller the Elder whistled lowly.
"This something else." he commented.
"Bet people get lost in here all the time the first couple days." Miller the Younger agreed. "Where are we goin', Marty?"
"The loading docks on the west side of the facility." LeBeau answered, holding the map out in front of him so he didn't have to take his eyes off the twisting street in front of him.
"Are we there yet?" Miller the Elder wondered dryly.
"Shut up."
The three were crammed into the front seat of a pick-up truck, the brothers trying their best not to bump the driver, while the driver tried to figure out exactly how to get to the loading docks from the south entrance. LeBeau was starting to wish that he'd had the chance to drive through the complex during the day, but a visitor's pass wouldn't have gotten him very far. Security patrolled up and down the access roads, making sure that no one was trying to get where they weren't supposed to be. The entrances were guarded during the day and locked with gates and spike strips at night, save for just one. They'd had to sneak through when the guard had gone on a coffee break.
The complex did come with helpful directional signs, but LeBeau was the cautious type. The headlights were off for this sneaking mission.
Miller the Younger plucked the map from LeBeau and flicked on the smart-phone screen to better examine the hand-drawn lines that wobbled around nigh-illegible handwriting. He looked up at the road ahead, where they were coming to an intersection. Without the headlights to ruin their night-vision, it was much easier to get a good look at their surroundings. He could read the road signs fairly easily.
"Turn right." he said.
LeBeau glanced at him. "You sure?"
"We're heading north. A left turn's just going to take us back to the road outside. The closer we get to the building, the more likely we are to spot the loading docks." Miller the Younger explained.
"Yeah, sure..." LeBeau said it like he didn't believe a word, but he turned right nonetheless.
"And your man has terrible handwriting." Miller the Younger added.
"Yeah, he was a nervous bastard." LeBeau agreed. "But he's one of them desperate types, y'know? Stuck in a rut, don't know how to get out. Throw enough money at him and he'll bark like a dog."
"Those bastards are the best kind." Miller the Elder said, watching out the windows for any sign of their destination. "Gotta be careful they don't squeal, though. One squeak from them and the whole thing's on your head. There."
He pointed across his brother's chest, roughly in the direction of the side mirror. LeBeau looked over and saw something that roughly resembled the loading docks. He spun the wheel to the left, taking the truck over the grass median that separated the road from the dock parking lot. There was no time to find a road leading over there. His man had the instructions to wait by the door for only an appointed amount of time and that window was starting to close up.
The truck grumbled and shook its way across the grass, but the tires hit the pavement on the other side. LeBeau pulled the vehicle up into a parking space near the door. They grabbed their guns out of the glove compartment and got out of the truck, getting themselves situated. The plan was not to shoot anyone, in the name of discretion. Get in and then get out with no bullets left behind.
LeBeau went up the steps with the Miller brothers on his heels and knocked on the door. Right away, it creaked open, revealing a man with gray eyes, dark hair, and a perpetually jittery expression. He wore a blue jump-suit and a name-badge that revealed his status as a S.T.A.R. Labs night janitor.
"M-Martin..." he stuttered, flinching slightly upon seeing the man.
"Rudy, m'man, time for you to earn your paycheck." LeBeau said, pushing the janitor aside so he and the Miller brothers could come in. "You do what I ask?"
"Y-Yeah, I uploaded ev-everything on the flash d-drive just like you asked. The cameras are l-looping." Rudy nodded, shying back automatically from the burly twins. He was a thin man and they were quite a bit bigger.
"Hey, they're harmless." LeBeau assured him and the brothers grinned in what was supposed to be a reassuring manner, but they showed too much tooth. "Back-up, if something goes wrong."
"Do you ex-expect something to go wrong?" Rudy wondered.
"Not if you did everything right."
The janitor cringed.
"Now let's go." LeBeau said, leading the way down the hall.
Rudy cringed some more and seemed to shrink into his blue jumpsuit. Miller the Elder threw a broad arm around the janitor to guide him forward in LeBeau's wake and tried to be reassuring. They couldn't have the dude flaking out on them now. They still needed him to get through the secured doors.
"Hey, don't you worry, little man. Ain't nothing gonna go wrong. You look like a man who knows how to get things done." he said.
"R-Really?" Rudy asked weakly, looking up at him nervously.
"Yeah, really." Miller the Younger agreed. "How much is Marty paying you to help?"
"Five grand. Never seen that much money in my life." Rudy admitted. Not all at one time, at least. The cost of living in Metropolis assured that he never had more than five hundred in his bank account at any given time.
"That's good money. Bet you deserve it. You look like you work hard." Miller the Younger said, patting him on the back.
"I do work hard." Rudy muttered in a sort of awed tone, as if he had never considered such a thing before.
"But you'll wanna blow out of town after this over." Miller the Elder informed him.
The janitor blinked. "What?"
"Well see, you kinda handed in your letter of resignation by agreeing to this. Once they figure out the theft, they're going to start looking at who was on shift tonight and your name's going to be on the sheet. They'll take you in for questioning, at least." Miller the Elder explained. "Five grand, though. That's gonna be enough to get you outta here and set up somewhere else."
"You should come with us. We're heading for the bayou after this. Got plans for a restaurant. We could use a third hand on setting up." Miller the Younger suggested. "We could teach you all about good Cajun cooking."
Rudy had been paling ever since the implication of getting arrested. His face looked singularly pale under the emergency lights that were only on this late at night. He started to twist under Miller the Elder's restraining arm, his eyes darting around as he looked for a place to run to.
"W-Wait, what'd I agree to do?" he wondered frantically. "I don't want to get arrested, I can't go to jail!" He jerked out of he Miller's grip so suddenly that the twin let him go out of surprise, and ran up to clasp LeBeau's jacket in clutching hands. "Please, Martin! I'll just give you the keycard for the store room and we'll call it even! I can't go to jail! I never agreed to this much-"
"Shut up!" LeBeau snarled, swinging a fist at the man. He aborted it so it didn't hit him, but Rudy ducked anyways. LeBeau grabbed the collar of his jumpsuit and pulled him up to eye level.
"You want the five grand or not? I ain't payin' you until we're outta here. Now you agreed to get us in and down to the store room yourself. That means you shut up and do what you're told. No backing out, not until the job is over. You got me?"
Rudy nodded frantically. "S-Sure, whatever you say."
"That's what I like to hear." LeBeau said. He shoved the janitor forward to the intersection of hallways they had come upon. "Now which way are we going?"
"Th-That way." Rudy pointed down the right hand hallway. "We're going to pass one of the bigger labs, th-though. There might still be people there."
"Will they see us?" LeBeau nodded.
"No, it's t-technically down a level. There's an observation window-"
"Lead the way."
Rudy did so reluctantly.
"Hey Marty, go easy on the little guy." Miller the Younger suggested, lightly putting a hand on the other's shoulder. "He's nervous as hell."
"I ain't in the mood for coddling the little bastard. Just wanna get in and out. Don't care if it means I hafta be an ass." LeBeau grumbled, shaking off the hand.
They walked down the gray, sterile hallways. Their shadows grew long and short again as they passed by the only lights on. A brightness shone at the corner up ahead and Rudy's sudden skittishness told them they were getting close to the active lab he had mentioned. It was indeed down a level, but part of it was enclosed in glass panes, like the observation deck of an operating theater. LeBeau was getting the feeling that Rudy was taking them along the tour route, as it was less likely to have security check-points.
The Miller brothers pushed ahead of Rudy curiously to see what was down inside the lab. LeBeau followed them and looked down through the windows. He almost knew what was down there before he actually looked and it was still a sight to behold.
"Whoa, is that what I think it is down there?" Miller the Elder breathed out excitedly.
Only three scientists were visible in the lab, but they had no reason to be looking up at the observation deck. Everything to occupy their attention was right in the middle of the floor. An alien craft gleamed white like a piece of milky quartz. It had an elongated shape, sleek and fast-looking. The central pod that was about four feet long but only two feet wide. Three gimbals were suspended around the pod, like that of a gyroscope to control the roll, the pitch, and the yaw. The gimbals weren't attached to anything, not even each other. Sprouting from the back of the pod were conical spikes that curved towards each other like claws. Altogether, it was a spindly looking thing and the edges seemed to push the eye away, like it wanted you to look to the side and forget about it.
"Yep, that's it." LeBeau grinned, leaning on the railing. "That's the ship that brought Superman down to Earth."
"Wow." Miller the Elder whispered.
"We ain't stealing that, are we?" Miller the Younger wondered. No one could blame him for being awed. Even at rest, it was a beautiful sight. Under the bright lights of the lab, the quartz-like crystal had an iridescent shine.
"Nah, I just wanted to see it." LeBeau said. "Just wanted to remind myself where he came from, so I wouldn't feel so bad about getting caught."
"He did help put your ass in jail."
"He ain't a god or a monster, but he just ain't human either."
Not that they could have stolen it anyways. It was reported to weigh at least a ton and Superman had shut off the anti-gravs. The craft was balanced perfectly and precariously on its outer gimbal. It seemed a light touch could have pushed it over, but that was hardly the case. It would take all sorts of heavy equipment they didn't have to move it.
LeBeau pushed off the railing. "Okay, no time to gawk. Back to work. Where's the store room, Rudy?"
"This way."
There was a locked door off the corridor. Rudy swiped his keycard and got them through easily. Being a janitor, he had a fairly extensive security clearance. There were a few parts of the facility he wasn't permitted to access, even to clean. But a store room wasn't one of those places.
It was at the end of the locked hallway. Rudy swiped his keycard through the reader and the light flashed green as the locks clunked open. He pulled the door open. LeBeau went through first. The store room was large and partially lit. The metal shelves were littered with more science-related things than he knew existed. There were crates full of spare parts. Barrels and canisters full of who knew what.
"What are we looking for?" Miller the Elder asked.
"It's labeled AC one one nine dash three eight." LeBeau said. He looked over at the janitor, who flinched. "Rudy, where would we find that?"
"Um... AC would be..." Rudy turned down the aisle directly next to the door. The shelves were stocked high with barrels of all sizes. "It'd be along this wall, probably near the middle, but I don't think we-"
"I didn't ask what you think. Shut up." LeBeau ordered.
He walked down the aisle, the Miller brothers trailing after him. They kept stopping to dig their hands into the crates and poke and prod at whatever they found. It was usually calcified formations in bags and containers. A clear canister of sloshy pink liquid. A container of green rocks that gave off a faint glow, stamped with a warning sticker that the rocks shouldn't be handled without protective gear. Everything was meticulously labeled and the brothers were careful to put everything back where they had picked it up.
LeBeau, meanwhile, moved along the aisle and watched the numbers move up until he reached a stocky metal barrel bearing the tag with the appropriate number.
"Shit, that's bigger than I imagined." he muttered, scratching his head.
"Nah, we could just roll it out." Miller the Younger said.
"I could carry it." Miller the Elder shrugged.
"No, you can't!" Rudy interrupted, half-lunging at them like he could physically stop them.
"What are you on about?" LeBeau demanded.
"Martin, look at the label." Rudy pointed to the bright orange label on the side of the barrel. Beside the black-and-yellow sticker for toxic waste were the words 'Potentially hazardous material. Do not agitate.' "We can't shake it up or who knows what will happen. We'll have to roll it out on a hand-cart."
"Then go get one." LeBeau ordered.
"But that's all the way back at the loading docks." Rudy pointed out.
"Great. We'll wait for you outside. We'll have the truck pulled up to a dock." LeBeau slapped a hand on the janitor's shoulder and then squeezed hard in warning. "And if you don't come back with my stuff, don't expect to get paid."
Rudy's nod was almost spasmodic. "S-Sure thing."
LeBeau released his shoulder with a shove and went past him back to the door. The Miller brothers each slapped a hand on the janitor's back as they passed. Theirs was one of solidarity and reassurance, but Rudy was far from reassured by anything. He gave himself a moment to moan into his hands in despair.
This was a bad idea. It had been from the start. He was going to lose his job if he got caught and Rudy had no marketable skills aside from being pretty handy with a mop and a wash-cloth. Hell, he was going to have to quit, period. He couldn't risk getting caught if the theft was found and reported. They would check the schedule and see that he was on shift in this part of the building and they would come after him.
But five thousand was five thousand and that sort of money wasn't easy to come by for a blue-collar worker. That was an entire year's pay for him. That was enough money to move out of Metropolis and set up somewhere else.
Gotham was full of cheap apartments.
Of course, if he had known a week ago how this night was going to end for him, he would have blown out of town within the hour. By dawn, Rudy Jones was not going to be the same man he had been when he'd clocked in for work.
No one would be certain if he was even still a man at all.
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