THE CASE OF THE SPIDER GODDESS

It's not every day that a movie-star walks into the office.

It was lunchtime, and at the moment I was the only person in the office. Marie, my partner and girlfriend, was down at the corner deli, picking up a pair of sandwiches for us. Sooraya, our secretary and all around gal-friday, was "having lunch with her husband". That actually translated into "screwing like a pair of particularly horny bunnies". And that was great. Sooraya and Josh have a history that would make any reasonable human being want them to find happiness.

Our prospective client was a big guy, well over six foot tall and with a broad upper body. I estimated that he was in his late twenties or early thirties. He was wearing a conservative suit that didn't look too expensive, but had obviously been tailored for his big build. As he entered the office, I noticed that he had a very slight limp. It looked like an old injury to which he'd long-since adjusted. But as a result, his walk had a definite sway.

I knew who he was, but I've never been inclined to fawn over famous people.

"Hello," I said to him. "I'm Domino."

"My name is Wayne," he answered back in a deep, drawling, voice. "John Wayne."

If a prospective client is a man, I usually greet him with a handshake. Shaking hands with a woman is still considered odd in a lot of places, and how a guy reacts to that can give me a feel for his personality.

Wayne didn't hesitate to take my offered hand. He had a strong grip, but I had the impression he was being careful. I suppose he didn't want to hurt the "little lady".

Just for the record, I'm tall for a woman. However, I have to admit that Wayne still towered over me.

As we shook hands, Wayne's eyes wandered around the office. It seemed to me that he was more than just checking out the decor. He was looking for someone.

I made a gesture towards the coffeepot. "I might be a little stale, but if you'd care for a cup..."

"No, thanks," Wayne said as he glanced back at me. His voice tended to rumble.

I'd seen Wayne in a few movies. In my opinion, he wasn't really all that great of an actor, but he was big, ruggedly handsome, and an increasingly popular box-office draw. He starred in westerns and the occasional drama, specializing in the role of a stoic man-of-action. He started off with the California movie studios, but didn't get anywhere. Then the local studio convinced him to move east and give them a try. So far, that had worked out pretty well for both sides. Wayne was young by Hollywood standards, but he'd already made a decent career for himself. He'd starred in about a half-dozen movies and I had a sneaking suspicion that he'd make at least a few more before his career finally fizzled out.

"Why don't you sit down, Mr. Wayne?" I said.

Obligingly, Wayne took the leather upholstered chair that faced my desk. He still had a slightly unsettled air about him, as if something wasn't quite as he'd expected.

Then the office door opened up and Marie walked in. She was carrying a paper bag from the deli. My stomach complained - it would be a while before I finally got to eat.

Marie's face lit up. "Duke!" she exclaimed in delight.

A big grin came over Wayne's face. "Marie!"

Wayne stood up, and the two of them hugged in the middle of the room.

What the hell?

Wayne was back in the chair. Marie was sitting on the edge of my desk, a pen and legal pad in her hands as she took notes. She's pretty good with shorthand and has no problem keeping up with a two-person conversations.

"I have a friend who's in trouble," Wayne said seriously. "But she's not talking to anyone. I want you to find out what's going on."

"What kind of trouble?" I asked.

Wayne didn't quite roll his eyes, but he came close. "She's also in the movie business. The last few days, she's been missing or showing up late for shoots. That's messing with the schedule and the guys in the head office are getting mad. Also, the jackass directing her movie is starting to shoot off his mouth. He's telling anyone who'll listen that he'll never work with her again once he gets this movie in the can. That's bad, but what really bother's me is that I hear she's covered with bruises. She's got some half-assed story about falling off a horse, but the stunt guys on her movie are telling me that it looks more like she's been in a fight. Anyway, this morning the studio decided to delay shooting until she looks a little less like a barroom brawler."

"What's her name?" Marie asked.

"Mary Jane Watson," Wayne replied.

The local movie studio is called Williams Worldwide Productions, and it's owned by a guy named Simon Williams. Williams inherited a ton of money a few years ago and decided to use it to get into the movie business. The word is that he tried to set up an operation of his own in Hollywood, but the existing studios made that impossible. So he moved back to his hometown and tried again. That time it worked.

So Williams Worldwide had only been in business for a few years, but he's made a string of successful movies. Williams specialized in finding talent that Hollywood hadn't noticed, and making them into stars. MJ Watson and John Wayne were just two of the once small-time actors that Williams had made popular.

"MJ and I have worked together," Wayne continued. "A movie called 'The Comanche Kid' was our big break. We've been working on different projects since then, but we keep in touch."

Actually, Marie and I had seen 'The Comanche Kid'. It made a lot of money, and for a good reason. It was a pretty good movie.

"Mr. Wayne..." I began.

"Most folks call me Duke," Wayne interrupted.

I nodded. "Okay, Duke, but when a woman shows up with bruises and no good explanation... well, that usually means it's time to look at the man in her life."

"There's no man in her life," Wayne said with a shake of his head.

"Duke..." I began.

"She has a girlfriend," Wayne finished for me.

I paused for a moment to try to get a feel for how Wayne was reacting to what he'd just said. If I had to make a guess, while not necessarily a fan of the concept of same-sex couples, his concern for his friend was overriding everything else. In the final balance, I would have to say the outcome tilted in Duke's favor.

"Does her girlfriend have a mean streak?" Marie asked.

Wayne shook his head. "I've never met her. Her name's Gwen Stacy. You've probably heard of her."

Marie raised an eyebrow in surprise. Actually, we had heard of Gwen Stacy - in fact, I suppose most people in town knew of her. She was an up-and-coming night-club singer with a lot of fans. Over the last few years she's built a career here, and was beginning to perform in other cities up and down the coast.

We'd caught her show more than once. Stacy got her start in a nightclub named Remy's. Marie and I have been known to visit the place.

"Okay, Duke, what's the deal with you and Miss Watson?" Marie asked.

Wayne actually sighed. "When we were working together on 'The Comanche Kid' we went out a few times. It was just dinner and dancing, but I eventually noticed how she looked at pretty girls the same way I did. I filed that under 'none of my business' and gave up on any ideas about me and her. But MJ and I get along. She's gone out of her way to help me when I've needed a hand, and I've done the same for her. She's a friend, and I'm worried that she's got herself into something that she can't handle."

"Have you talked to her?" I asked.

"Yep. I phoned her last night... and she told me to get lost. From what I hear, that's what she's told everyone who's asked any questions. And I'm worried she may be running out of time."

"Why is time a problem?" Marie asked.

"Hollywood has a system," Wayne said. "You'd be amazed how crazy movie-people can be, so the studios had to came up with ways to hush-up scandals. They work with reporters - providing interviews and stories in exchange for keeping some things secret. Sometimes bribes are paid. Sometimes they make threats. Usually the threats are financial, but sometimes they're physical."

I stirred uneasily. I suddenly had a suspicion where Wayne was going.

"So Hollywood has a system to deal with possible bad publicity," I repeated slowly, "but does the local studio have one?"

"I don't think so," Wayne told me. "And if they do, it's not as big or as powerful as the one the west-coast studios have put together."

"If this problem with MJ attracts enough attention, and if some reporter gets interested and starts digging, then they could find out about MJ and Gwen," Marie added softly.

"And that'll be the end of MJ's career," Wayne finished bleakly. "The studio will drop her like a hot potato."

Then Wayne gave us a determined look. "I know Tony Stark, and he recommended you. Once I realized that Marie was one of the two private eyes he was talking about, I knew I could trust you. I'll pay you the same rate he does."

That made Marie laugh. "Oh, sugar, we overcharge Stark like crazy."

I winced at that bit of honesty.

Wayne just shrugged. "Look, just figure out what's going on, do what you can to help, and send me a bill. But keep my name out of it. MJ will throw a fit if she finds out I'm going behind her back like this."

We hashed out some details and Wayne - Duke - paid us a generous advance. Then he left.

"Okay, how the hell do you know him?" I asked Marie almost as soon as the door closed behind Wayne.

"I was a damsel in distress and he saved me," Marie told me. There was a wry smile on her face.

Since Marie can knock anyone for a loop with just a touch, that was a fairly odd thing for her to say.

"Just how much distress were you really in?" I asked dryly.

Marie shrugged. "I was working the Slaughter Gulch case when I ran into a drunk in a bar. He got a little aggressive when I told him I wasn't interested. It wasn't anything I couldn't handle, but Duke was sitting on the next barstool. He helped me out. And, let me tell you, when a guy like Duke Wayne takes a punch for you, you don't fret over the details. You just enjoy the experience."

I grunted irritably.

When Sooraya got back to the office, she had a flush to her cheeks and a stray lock of hair protruding out from her hastily-wrapped head scarf. She and Josh must have gone extra innings.

Hassim - Sooraya's baby boy - wasn't with her. Lately, Josh had been taking care of the baby at home. Having Hassim crawling around the office didn't really bother me, but Sooraya was worried that it looked "unprofessional".

I swear, that girl is more responsible than either of her bosses.

"Find out what you can about Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy," I told Marie and Sooraya. "Keep it low key. For right now, just get the basic biographical stuff and any obvious rumors. I'll check on Wayne. We'll compare notes at closing time."

Marie and Sooraya nodded their heads and went to work.

I've said it before: the part where you check on your client is something they don't talk about in detective stories, but a smart private dick should always do it. Even when your client is a friend of your girl.

Early that evening, Marie, Sooraya, and I got back together.

"Wayne seems to be on the level," I said - maybe a bit grudgingly. "The fact that he and Watson dated for a while is well known. That they're no longer together, but still friends, is also common knowledge. Wayne himself has a good reputation both in the movie industry and around town. About the only oddity that anyone mentioned is that he has a fairly obvious taste for women from south of the border. That doesn't exactly jive with Wayne being interested in a redhead like Mary Jane Watson, but she is a knockout, so maybe he just varied his type for her."

"The biographical stuff on Wayne is pretty straightforward. He was born in Iowa, and his parents saddled him with a name that he was probably happy to ditch when an agent eventually suggested 'John Wayne' to him. He actually went to college on a football scholarship, but that ended when he busted up his knee. After he left college, Wayne hooked up with Hollywood, mostly working bit-parts for chump-change. He was getting nowhere, but then Williams Worldwide offered him a contract and he jumped at the opportunity. The popular opinion about his career is that he's taken a little talent, combined it with a lot of charisma, and made it work for him. Some people admire that, but others are obviously jealous."

"He and Tony Stark apparently drink in some of the same watering holes. I figure that's how they know each other."

"So what did you two get?" I asked when I was done.

Marie went first: "Mary Jane Watson is from New York city and her parents currently live there. She has a single older sister who's married and lives in Boston. Her father is a professor, but he wanders from position to position, and the family has moved quite a few times. Watson wasn't a bad student, but she always leaned towards work that relied on her good looks. So throughout high-school she did after-school and summer-time modeling and acting. Her deep dark secret - well, the one that I found out about - is that she used to work every now and then as a burlesque dancer."

"Watson was doing a theater role as Juliet in 'Romeo and Juliet' when a talent scout spotted her. She left school in her senior year to come here and work for Williams Worldwide. Like Duke said, her first movie was 'The Comanche Kid'. It did pretty good and she's been working as an actress ever since."

"Her latest movie is called 'The Curse of the Spider Goddess' - it's some sort of horror story. The movie has had a lot of production problems and is over-budget and behind schedule. Actually, it was in trouble even before the recent problems with Miss Watson. The director is on thin ice with the studio and the word is that he's looking for a scapegoat. If Miss Watson has been screwing up, she's a likely candidate."

Marie finished. I looked at Sooraya. She consulted her notes for a moment before she began.

"Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy was born and raised in the Queens borough of New York city. Her father - George Stacy - is a police captain and has a very good reputation within the NYPD. Her mother is deceased, having died in childbirth. Miss Stacy is an only child."

"Growing up, Miss Stacy was an above-average student. As a youngster, she had several odd jobs, but nothing unusual. However, after her senior year in high school, she began working as a waitress at a local night-club. Eventually, she began performing as a singer on the nights when no professional talent available. She became popular. Eventually, she moved here and began working a series of singing jobs. Since then, her career has taken off."

"It's odd that she left New York to come here," Marie suggested. "You'd think New York would be a better place to start a singing career. Off hand, the only place that might be better is L.A."

"How well is it known that MJ and Gwen are an item?" I asked.

Sooraya shook her head. "Not at all."

Marie said, "I didn't hear a peep - not even in our circles. Those two are doing a great job of hiding the fact that they're a couple, but like Duke said, it's their careers if they get caught. So they have a lot of incentive."

"They're both from New York city," Sooraya observed as she flipped through the pile of notes we'd put on Marie's desk. "Ah. Here's something. They attended the same high school - Midtown High - at the same time. Miss Watson left after her junior year, when she began working for the studio. Miss Stacy stayed in school, graduated, and then moved here within a year."

"Maybe they were high-school sweethearts and reconnected when they both ended up in the same town?" Marie suggested. "Or better yet, Gwen actually followed MJ here."

"Maybe," I said. Then I glanced at my wristwatch. "Tell you what - let's go have a talk with Remy. He knows Gwen and I'll bet he knows Mary Jane. Maybe he has something to tell us."

"Ladies! Welcome to Remy's!" the buxom hostess said proudly. Then, with a flourish, she opened the inner door to the club. Even before she did that, we could hear the sound of music and conversation on the far side of the door. Once the door opened, the sound became a roar.

Marie and I walked in. I was still in my usual suit and tie, but Marie had taken the time to slip into something more fashionable. She keeps a freshly cleaned evening gown and a good pair of high-heels in the office. That sort of look can sometimes be handy while working a case.

For my part, I'd put on a clean shirt, buffed my shoes, and ran a comb through my hair. Hey, I never claimed to be anywhere near as stylish as Marie. In fact, it's a waste of time to even try.

It wasn't even eight yet, but Remy's was packed and filled with smoke. On the far end of the room, one of the best of the local big-bands was playing some particularly bouncy jazz, and couples were responding by crowding the dance floor. On the side-stages, some very pretty girls wearing huge hats and tall high-heels - and nothing else - were swaying to the beat. The door to Remy's famous backroom was open and the people inside were eagerly throwing their money away at Remy's gaming tables.

Remy's is the Wild West of local nightclubs. Anything can happen - and often does. Remy keeps his business open through a combination of political pressure, bribes, and blackmail. Too many important people have their needs and desires filled there, Remy makes a ton of money doing that, and a lot of unwise things have been done within those four walls by people who should have known better. The combination makes Remy and his establishment a difficult target for the local guardians of public morality.

The only wilder place in town was the Hellfire Club. However, the Hellfire Club is members-only, and is pretty snooty about who gets to be a member. Besides, Remy's has better music and a lot less bondage. I prefer it that way.

Well... usually.

"Dom! Marie!" someone yelled.

We both glanced towards one of the side-stages. A tall dancer, naked from her eyebrows to her ankles, was waving at us.

Marie waved back eagerly. I was a bit more restrained.

The dancer - her name was Lucy Langtry - pointed to a table next to her stage. The people sitting there were getting ready to leave. We began moving in that direction, working our way through the crowd. Just before we got to the table, a trio of businessmen moved in, obviously intent on taking over. But a waiter calmly intercepted them, pointed to Marie and I, and told them something. The businessmen looked disgruntled, but backed off.

Seconds after Marie and I sat down, a pair of whiskey's appeared in front of us.

Yeah, we're fairly well known at Remy's. And the owner likes us. The staff has picked up on that.

"Is this a good idea?" I said softly into Marie's ear.

"Do you see Remy anywhere?" Marie responded.

She had a point. Normally, by now Remy would be all over us. Well... actually he'd be all over Marie. He's got a big ol' Cajun crush on her.

Every now and then, Remy leaves town for a while. That usually meant someone, somewhere, was about to be relieved of their more valuable possessions. Yeah, I'd noticed that pattern a long time ago, but had never got around to telling Remy that I knew his secret. I was saving it for a rainy day.

However, Marie and I had to talk to somebody. And it looked like the man himself wasn't around. So maybe Lucy could help.

The song currently playing ended. Another dancer came on stage to relieve Lucy - and Lucy stepped off the stage and right onto the table where we were sitting. She was still naked.

Kneeling on our table, Lucy leaned over, tilted the absurdly huge hat she was wearing out of the way, and then gave me a long, long, kiss.

I didn't really try to avoid it. Did I mention how pretty Lucy is?

Once the kiss ended, Lucy glanced at a definitely amused Marie and said, "Sorry, but I really owe Dom here an apology."

"Uh... why?" I asked after I licked my lips. Lucy's lipstick tasted expensive. And that close to her, I could tell she'd also used lipstick to touch up her nipples. I had a sudden fantasy of making a taste comparison. It took some effort not to follow through.

"I do remember bits and pieces of the last time we met," Lucy replied - she was obviously enjoying my confusion. "I was kinda rude to you. For one thing, I said your ass reminded me of a guy's ass."

"Well, it is kinda narrow and firm," Marie interjected thoughtfully, "so you aren't really wrong. But really, I like it that way."

"Yeah, I can see your point," Lucy agreed, "but it's been bothering me. I wasn't trying to be mean."

"I think my ass is just fine," I said with an attempt at vast dignity - not that anybody was listening. It was pretty obvious by then that I didn't have any control of the conversation. That's a characteristic of talking with Lucy.

Still holding back the brim of her hat with one hand, Lucy then leaned to the side and kissed Marie. "And that's my apology for groping Dom the last time we met," Lucy said when she was done. "I put a lot of hands-on moves on your girl."

"I don't know," Marie replied with a broad smile. "I was pretty offended. You might just have to apologize again..."

Lucy obliged. The people at the nearby tables were getting quite a show, but they seemed to be enjoying it. Even the replacement dancer on-stage was just going through the motions as she watched Lucy in action. Lucy is more than just good-looking - she's a bundle of charismatic heat and energy.

"Okay, I forgive you," Marie said when Lucy was done. She sounded a little breathless. And there was a good reason for that, Lucy is one hell of a kisser.

"Dammit, Lucy! Put on some clothes when you're off-stage!" a male voice yelled. Then something that looked like a big scarf sailed through the air and landed on the table, right between Lucy and us.

"Stupid rules," Lucy grumbled as she nimbly rolled off our table and wrapped the scarf-thing around her hips. It covered about three-quarters of her ass, but unless she stood perfectly still, the tied-off ends didn't really conceal her bush.

They have an interesting definition of 'clothes' for the dancers are Remy's.

Lucy took off her big hat and tossed it onto our table. Obviously relieved, she ran her hands through her damp hair - she's a brunette and keeps it medium-short. Then she squeezed between me and the table and sat on my lap, facing me. My hands automatically went to her knees, as I tried to get a handle on the situation by pinning her into place. Lucy just smiled and pulled my hands up until they were very high on her warm thighs. The tip of one of my thumbs brushed against a wisp of pubic hair.

"How about you?" Lucy asked me huskily. "Am I forgiven yet?"

"Well..." I responded slowly. Then I couldn't talk any more because Lucy's tongue was back in my mouth.

We met Lucy during a previous case. She was both a source of information and a blackmail victim. She wasn't our client, but while working the case we dealt with the blackmailer. We also found out that something had been done to Lucy's mind - something permanent. And that was a problem.

"Didn't you have a talk with Jean Grey?" I asked once Lucy was done kissing me. Someone had messed with Lucy's mind in a way that really bothered Jean, but at the time she hadn't been sure what to do about it.

Lucy's eyes met mine, and they were bright with amusement. "Oh, yeah. You know, for such a pretty lady, Jean can be kind of boring sometimes. Blah-blah-blah biochemical influence. Blah-blah-blah, my mind got messed with. Blah-blah-blah, that's why I really like sex. Blah-blah-blah, free will. Blah-blah-blah, please let me help. Blah-blah-blah. You know what I told her?"

"What?" I asked slowly.

Lucy kissed me on the nose and leaned close to me, her uncovered breasts pushing against mine. Then her mouth was next to my ear.

"I told her that I'm happy," she whispered to me, her breath hot on the side of my face. "I'm happy and maybe she should just accept that."

I considered that for a long moment. And then I nodded. Jean's got a pretty strong sense of right and wrong, and she's one of the most powerful psychics I know. If she decided to let what had happened to Lucy slide, then maybe I should also leave it be.

"Can we talk in private?" I asked.

Lucy leaned back and smiled as she once again stared into my eyes.

"Only if Marie comes along," she answered.

That was how we found ourselves in one of Remy's infamous private rooms.

Actual sex - whether it be prostitution or otherwise - supposedly isn't tolerated in Remy's establishment. The private rooms are supposed to be for private parties and discreet meetings. Quite a few deals are cut in Remy's place and a lot of those deals involve the sort of things that people don't want overheard.

Of course, Remy also says that once the doors close, even he doesn't know for sure what goes on in one of his private rooms. And nobody on the staff protested when an essentially-naked Lucy escorted us into a back room with a hand on each of our asses.

The room itself was maybe thirty feet by thirty feet in size. There was an expensive-looking oak table and some finely-made chairs. The walls and door were paneled and upholstered in a way that both looked fancy and made the room soundproof.

Lucy took off her hip-hugging wrap and hung it from a coat hook. She was back to wearing nothing but her heels, some expertly-applied makeup, and a hungry smile.

"We just want to talk," I told her quickly.

Lucy rolled her eyes, leaned against the door, and indignantly crossed her arms under her breasts. "Wow. What's a girl got to do to get some attention from you two?"

"Believe us, sugar," Marie chuckled as her eyes wandered up and down Lucy's tall and rangy form. "We're paying attention."

That made Lucy smile. "Are you two on a case?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied.

A grin appeared on Lucy's face. "Neat! I like detective movies. Are you going to handcuff me to a chair and give me the third degree?"

"It's not like in the movies," Marie replied with an amused shake of her head.

Which is true. Usually, most detective work is routine. However, in a town full of powered people, it can get weird in a hurry. And sometimes it can just as quickly get deadly.

"We hear that Gwen Stacy got her start here," I said.

Lucy nodded. "That's true. We were the first place in town where she sang. She's a little more legit nowadays, but she does a gig here every couple of months. I think she figures she owes Remy for giving her a chance. Remy appreciates the courtesy - those are always big nights for us."

"How well do you know her?" I asked.

The Lucy shook her head. "Uh-uh, girls. I've been pretty patient with you two, but from now on we're doing things my way. Every question you ask, you have to take something off."

I was still trying to understand what Lucy was asking when Marie unhesitatingly kicked off her shoes.

Lucy responded immediately. "Gwen and I have talked, but its not like we're pals. We move in different circles."

"Does she have any problems? Is anybody hassling her?" Marie asked.

"That's two questions," Lucy pointed out.

Marie took off her string of (fake) pearls and put them on the table. Then she wiggled out of her dress - it didn't have a zipper - and draped it over the nearest chair. That left her down to her bra, panties, garter belt, and stockings.

Lucy shrugged. "As far as I know, she's doing fine. Of course, back when she first started here, there were the usual problems with customers hitting on her, but that's to be expected. For a kid her age, she handled them pretty well. Gwen's not just a pretty face and good set of tonsils. She's smart."

Then she frowned. "She was here a couple of nights ago - as a customer, not a singer. And she had a nasty bruise on the side of her face. She was wearing a veiled hat to try and cover it, but I caught a glimpse."

Marie and I exchanged a look.

"What do you know about her?" I added hastily. Marie was getting way ahead in this game. Then I took off my jacket and dropped it on a chair.

Lucy gave me a slightly dirty look. I think she would have preferred that Marie keep paying the toll.

"She's from New York. Her daddy's a cop. I've met him - he came down about a year ago to hear her sing. I think he'd rather she be doing something closer to home, and maybe a little more traditional, but he's proud of her."

"What's he like?" Marie asked before I could say anything else. Then she unhooked her bra and put it on the same table as my jacket.

Lucy and I both paused to enjoy the view. It's great when people share a common interest.

Then Lucy grinned cheerfully. "He's an older man, but in good shape, and handsome in a craggy and distinguished kind of way. He's also worried that his daughter is hanging around with the wrong sort of people. He's an old-fashioned tough-guy who likes his coffee black, his whiskey neat, and his women bent over the kitchen table. I like him."

Marie and I looked at each other.

"Oh, don't be so shocked," Lucy snorted. "He was sitting alone, listening to his daughter sing. I sat down and we talked. I liked him and things took off from there. It wasn't easy to get him to relax, but it was definitely worth my time. The next morning he gave me his phone number and asked me to let him know if I ever heard that Gwen was in trouble."

"Have you ever felt the need to call him?" I asked. That cost me my shoes.

"Yeah. Right about the time we started having this conversation - and then remembered that mark on her face. What's going on? Is Gwen okay?"

It was on the tip of my tongue to suggest that if Lucy wanted me to answer that, maybe she should do something of us. But given that this was Lucy, that was a dangerous direction to go.

"We have a case that involves her, but we don't have a lot to work with. So we're asking around. Oh... and there's no need to call her dad about that. So far, nothing much has turned up."

Lucy considered that. Then she shook her head. "I hope she's not in trouble. I only talked to her a few times, but she seems like a sweet girl. Singers are usually nut-cases. Gwen isn't like that."

"Is she seeing anyone?" Marie asked suddenly.

Marie unsnapped her stockings and was yanking them off her legs as Lucy answered. "No boyfriends that I know of, but I really don't know her all that well."

"We know she works both sides of the aisle," I told Lucy.

She looked at me. With a sigh, I loosened my tie and pulled it off.

"Yeah, but I hear that lately she's been leaning towards the lady's side of the aisle. Most of the guys she sees seem like they're just for show. If she has a main squeeze - either guy or gal - I don't know who it is."

"Does Gwen's father know about her tastes?" I asked as I unzipped my pants. I was wearing my shoulder-holster over my shirt, and I'd rather not give that up.

Lucy considered that. "I don't know. And before you ask, he absolutely would not hurt his daughter if he found out. Once you get past his take-no-shit exterior, George is actually a pretty gentle guy. And he adores Gwen."

And then somebody knocked on the door. Marie and I kept to the background as Lucy opened the door a crack and talked to somebody outside.

"Sorry, girls," she said to us over her bare shoulder. "But another dancer twisted her ankle and I gotta go spell her. Later!"

And then Lucy was gone.

Marie and I looked at one another.

"Well, that was interesting new take on background research," Marie said with an impish smile.

I just growled as I reached for my pants.

So we were a little disheveled as we left Remy's. Marie stopped in the lady's room to repair her makeup as I waited for her outside.

I enjoyed the fresh air as I waited. Actually, it was a nice night. The heat of the day was dying as the world cooled into darkness. A three-quarter moon was partially hidden by clouds coming in from the sea. The western sky was crystal-clear with bright stars, but to the east the sky was covered by a bank of back-lit clouds.

As I watched people come-and-go from the parking lot, I remembered a gun-fight that happened in front of Remy's. That was about two years ago, and it was a high-point in the case where I first met Emma Frost, Jean Grey, and Charles Xavier. And it wasn't even the most violent part of that case.

I shook my head in amazement. Just a couple of years ago. And so much had happened since then.

Marie came out of the club and hooked her arm around mine. She likes being our more feminine half.

"I hate to say it," she said to me, "but it strikes me as likely that Gwen and MJ got into a fight with each other."

I shrugged. "That's not good, but it could be worse. If it was just a lover's spat, then they can settle things between them - either by making up or breaking up. That's a lot less sinister than some of the other possibilities."

"But we have to make sure," Marie said.

I nodded in agreement.

Mary Jane Watson lived in a nice house in a rich part of town, which meant a stake-out would probably attract police attention. The bottom line is that the wealthy get better police protection than the rest of us. So instead we decided to again turn our sights on Gwen Stacy. She was living in a downtown brownstone. In that part of town, there are a lot more places for us to park our car and observe without being spotted.

Honestly, the odds were against us seeing anything of interest, but we didn't have a lot of leads.

If Marie isn't molesting me, we usually take turns sleeping while we're on a stakeout. Around midnight, Marie shook me awake.

"We've got something," she told me urgently.

I quickly sat up. There was a man at Gwen Stacy's door. He and Stacy were talking.

"He just stepped outside," Marie said. "He must have been in Stacy's place when we got here."

There was a pair of binoculars on the seat next to me. I focused them on Stacy and her friend. The light wasn't good, but I could see brown hair and a youngish face. Standing next to Stacy, he was only an inch or two taller than her. He had a slightly skinny build and was wearing a brown suit.

Gwen and the new guy hugged each other, and then there was a kiss. There was some heat to their kiss, but it didn't have the kind of intensity you see with new lovers. They'd known each other for some time.

"I think we've found out why Gwen and MJ are fighting," I said confidently. Marie made a satisfied "uh-huh" noise.

And then MJ Watson stepped out of the apartment door. She said something to the guy as Gwen continued to hug him. After that, MJ put a hand on the guy's chin, turned his head towards her, and kissed him as well.

"Okay... what the hell?" Marie exclaimed softly. I just shrugged. So much for our theory that some new guy was rocking Gwen and MJ's boat.

There were a few final words and then the guy turned and left. Gwen and MJ watched him walk away - it seemed to me that there was something sad and contemplative in their faces. Then MJ put an arm around Gwen and they went back inside.

The guy got into a late model Buick and started the car. I read-off the license plate to Marie as she jotted it down.

I started our car, making sure not to give the engine too much gas and attract attention. Then we tailed our new player. It turned out that he lived on the north-side of downtown, in a four-story apartment building. After he parked his car, he didn't immediately enter the building. Instead, he stood next to his car and gazed up at the sky for a while. After about ten minutes of that, he finally went inside.

Marie and I drove home after that. We had a lot to think about.

The next morning we tracked down the identity of Gwen and MJ's mysterious friend. A contact at the DMV used his license plate number to get us an id.

His name was Peter Parker.

A quick check of the local business guides showed that Peter Parker was employed as a chemist for Stark Industries. We then spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon telephoning a series of sources and contacts. The first of them was someone at Stark Industries. She summarized the information from Parker's resume to me over the phone.

Still using our phones, we back-tracked Parker's resume, pretending to be with a company that was thinking of hiring him. That gave us a sequence of other leads to pursue.

That afternoon, I summed up what we had found.

"Parker was born and raised in Queens, which is a borough of New York city. Growing up, Parker was a bit of a hard-luck kid. His parents died in a train accident when he was ten. After that, he moved in with his aunt and uncle. When Parker was in high-school, his uncle was killed in a street robbery gone bad. Parker apparently responded by burying himself in his schoolwork. His aunt didn't have any money and Parker's only way into college was to get a scholarship - which he did."

"I guess this isn't a big surprise, but Parker went to the same high-school as Stacy and Watson. According to our address checks, he and Gwen Stacy had homes right across the street from each other. They literally grew up together. Watson came into the scene later on. She started going to Peter and Gwen's high-school partway through their first year."

"For a while, Parker was a free-lance photographer for a New York news-rag called the "Daily Bugle". I talked to a secretary there named Bryant and she had nothing but good things to say about him. Parker's boss is kind of a blowhard, but he was also pretty complimentary. We got the same response from his teachers and professors. Everyone who knows Parker seems to like him."

"Parker is fresh out of graduate school. He graduated last fall from Empire State University with Masters degrees in biology and chemistry. He turned a lot of heads with an apparently quite impressive thesis - which was about replicating natural materials with man-made chemical processes. He doesn't have a criminal record, or any known vices. He apparently sticks close to the lab and the library. Even some of his professors seem to think that he needs to get his nose out of the books and get out more often. And he doesn't seem to have a lot in the way of personal friends."

"He has at least two that we know about," Sooraya corrected.

I nodded in agreement. "And the weird thing is, almost nobody seems to know that Parker has those two famous friends."

"Based on what we saw last night, I'd say they're more than just friends," Marie said with a shrug.

"And that's a bit surprising," I admitted. "Parker is apparently smarter than hell, but he doesn't really strike me as a man who'd be good with women."

"Threesomes do happen," Marie pointed out. "And that might explain how all three of them ended up here, instead of staying in New York. MJ got her career-making job and came here. Then Gwen followed. Parker showed up almost as soon as he got out of college."

"Makes sense," I conceded.

"But where does this leave us?" Sooraya asked. There was a frown on her face. "We still don't know what is happening with Miss Watson."

That was a good point.

"Well, there is something else we can check on," I said.

Marie and Sooraya gave me an expectant look.

"I got a pretty good look at Stacy, Parker, and Watson last night," I said.

"That's hard to forget," Marie chuckled. "We went from thinking we'd figured out what was going on, to being back to not having a clue, in a matter of about ten seconds."

I couldn't help but smile at that. "Okay. Now, Duke told us that MJ was so banged up that it was creating a problem with her movie's shooting schedule. And the stunt guys on that movie are telling Duke that it looked like she was in an actual fight. Right?"

Marie nodded. Sooraya kept quiet.

"And two nights before we talked to Lucy, she saw Gwen Stacy with a big bruise on her face. And it was so bad that Lucy noticed it underneath a veil that Gwen was wearing."

Marie nodded again. Again, Sooraya didn't say anything.

"Okay, last night I got a good look at both Gwen, MJ, and Parker. In fact, I had my binoculars on all of them. And both Gwen and MJ looked fine. They weren't hurt at all."

Marie and Sooraya exchanged a glance.

"That doesn't sound right," Marie said eventually. "If they were as banged up as we've been told, there's no way they could have healed up that fast."

This time, it was my turn to nod. "Who do we know who has the ability to heal injuries in no time at all?"

Marie closed her eyes. "Dammit," she sighed.

Sooraya said something in her native language that I think translated as, "Oh, for fuck's sake."

Josh Foley is Sooraya's husband. There's never been a formal ceremony, but they live together, have a son that they both cherish, and have recently taken to calling themselves man-and-wife. That's good enough for me.

Josh and Sooraya spent years as slaves of a malignant bastard called the Egyptian. The Egyptian was a psychic who fed off the emotions of human misery and suffering, and he really liked the taste of people with powers - what the scientists like to call "mutants."

Josh and Sooraya are both mutants.

I don't know everything that the Egyptian did to Josh and Sooraya. I don't want to know. I've caught a few hints and what little I do know makes me feel sick.

Sooraya can turn into a living storm of wind-driven dust. It's a more powerful and dangerous ability than you might think, since she can actually abrade flesh from bone when she really gets going. The Egyptian sold Sooraya again and again as a prostitute, but I've never asked if he also sold her as an assassin. I do know that there are some unsolved murders that fit her M.O. rather neatly.

Like I said, I don't want to know.

Josh, on the other hand, is a healer. He can cure diseases and heal busted bones and torn flesh by simply wishing it. There was a time when the Egyptian sold his services to the rich and desperate for a handsome sum.

He's never said anything about it, but I assume Josh can also kill with his power. And a lot of people do die of cancer, heart-attacks, consumption, infections, etc. Some of them die quickly and unexpectedly.

I still don't want to know.

We walked home with Sooraya and found Josh reading on the couch. Hassim was dozing peacefully in his lap. Josh seemed pretty surprised when all three of us walked through the door.

"Yeah, I healed Stacy and Watson," Josh told us without a trace of hesitation. "It was yesterday afternoon. Watson's agent knew me back when... well, he knows me. I've been working lately and word's been getting around that I'm back. Watson's agent came up to me on the street and told me that he had a job for me. The agent didn't want any names thrown around, but I recognized Watson almost immediately. It took me a little longer to figure out that the other lady was Gwen Stacy."

Josh glanced at Sooraya. "The pay was good - a hundred bucks. I put most of it into savings, but we're getting a new bed from Sears."

Sooraya gave her husband a fond look. Hassim was now in her lap. He was still asleep.

"What can you tell us?" I asked.

Josh shrugged. "It looked like they were in a fight. Bruises, cuts, and the like. Stacy even looked like she'd been grazed by a bullet. It didn't take me long to fix them. I said I would do it for twenty, but they insisted on paying me more. I didn't argue with them."

"Did they actually tell you that they'd been in a fight?" Marie asked.

"No. But it was obvious from the injuries."

"Did they say anything to you?"

Josh shook his head. "Mostly 'hello' and 'thank you', but that's fine. They were polite, and anybody who jumps up my fee by that much is okay by me."

"Could you tell anything about them?" Sooraya asked.

I wasn't sure what Sooraya was asking. Marie looked puzzled as well.

Josh shifted uncomfortably. "Well..." he began hesitantly.

"What are you two going on about?" Marie asked sharply.

Josh let out a breath. "I don't advertise it, but when I heal people, sometimes I can tell things about them. I can sense health problems, but I can also pick up other stuff."

I nodded. That made sense. "So what about Gwen and MJ?"

"They're powered," Josh said slowly.

Marie looked at me, her eyebrows raised high. This town has the highest percentage of powered people - mutants and such - than anywhere else on Earth.

"Except they're somehow different than most powered people," Josh continued awkwardly. "They didn't feel right. It's kind of hard to explain."

"Can you get more exact than that?" I asked. Marie and I had run into more than a few individuals who seemed to have really strange origins for their powers. A few of them actually seemed to be supernatural. Other's were a product of science gone crazy.

Josh nodded. "Actually, they reminded me a lot of the Banners. You know how they were poisoned by radiation? It felt something like that."

A while back, Josh tried to help Bruce and Elizabeth Banner. It didn't work - the radiation killing them was a part of them.

The Banner's were better now. If I were to believe Emma Frost, what eventually cured the Banners was a hell of a lot more extreme than anything Josh could bring to bear.

"By the way," I told Josh. "You're on retainer now. How does twenty a month sound?"

"Retainer?" Josh repeated curiously. "What does that mean?"

"It means you're on-call to help us when we need your help. Remember when you healed my busted knuckles last month? And that time Marie was thrown off that cable car? You're a pro and we should have been paying you. I'm sorry I didn't think of that before."

Josh looked a little indignant. "Hey, I owe you two..."

"And we owe you something for your time," I interrupted. "Believe me, I now expect you to be right there when we need your help. And the retainer isn't all of your pay - it just means you're keeping yourself available for us. You need to come up with some rates for what you do. You know a lady who's pretty good with a typewriter, so have her type something up and we can talk about it."

Sooraya was smiling now. I felt good about that. She doesn't smile much.

"Welcome to working for Dom," Marie told Josh. "She's a damned slave-driver."

For the first time since I met him, I saw Josh Foley laugh.

Back at the office, we spent an hour or two considering the case from different angles. Nothing seemed helpful.

I couldn't see how it mattered that Gwen and MJ were powered. That just didn't seem to have anything to do with the case. At least not yet.

"Perhaps we should call Miss Grey?" Sooraya suggested.

I shook my head. "She wouldn't be interested," I replied.

Jean Grey is a psychic who's also on retainer for us. However, she's very hesitant about going through people's minds for no good reason. At this stage of the investigation, if I were to ask her to read MJ Watson's mind, I knew she'd refuse.

Actually, I approved of that.

Then I made a decision.

"Grab our traveling bag," I told Marie. "We're taking the next train to New York city."

Sooraya keeps a train schedule in her desk. She immediately dug it out and began running a finger down a list of departure times.

"If you hurry, you can catch the 3:20 express," she told us.

"You've got an idea?" Marie asked as she retrieved a satchel from the closet.

I nodded. "Everyone in this case comes from Queens. Let's pay a visit."

The next morning, Marie and I were in the Parker living room, having tea and cookies with May Parker. We almost had to use force to prevent her from cooking us a full breakfast.

Parker's aunt was an elderly woman with pure white hair and more than a few lines on her face, but she was still active. Her home was meticulously clean and there was a clear awareness in her eyes that I certainly hope I'll have if I ever make it to her age.

There were framed photos scattered along the walls of the living room. Most of them were of Peter and May's late husband. A few featured combinations of a younger Peter, Mr. Parker, and Mrs. Parker with a couple who I assumed were Peter's parents. The resemblance between Peter and his father was pretty strong, but you could see his mother around his eyes.

According to May, her late husband had been an amateur photographer. I knew from our background research that Peter shared the same interest. Peter had probably picked it up from his uncle.

It also occurred to me that May Parker didn't have a lot left of her family.

"Is Peter in some kind of trouble?" Mrs. Parker asked worriedly.

"No, ma'am," Marie and I said simultaneously. May Parker was one of those women that you automatically didn't want to upset.

"But some friends of his might be," I continued. "Do you know Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson?"

"Yes," Mrs. Parker said. "Gwen grew up just across the street. And MJ stayed for a while with my cousin Anna - her parents were out of town a great deal. During that time, MJ went to high-school with Peter and Gwen. Oh, what have those two gotten themselves into? Is it serious?"

"We don't know for sure," I admitted. "And hopefully it's nothing much. Look, you know that they've both become pretty famous, right?"

Mrs. Parker gave me an amused look. "I'm old, my dear, not ancient. I go to the theater every now and then. Anna and I have seen every one of MJ's movies. And I hope to get a chance to hear Gwen sing. I've heard her before, of course, but I'd love to see her in a fancy nightclub."

"Sorry," I said with an apologetic wave of my hand. "So you obviously know Gwen, but how well do you know MJ?"

Mrs. Parker nodded her head towards a partially visible kitchen table. "Once MJ started going to school with Peter, she had dinner with us more than once. Anna and her husband both work - somebody had to feed MJ."

"So Peter and MJ were friends?" Marie asked.

A smile dimpled Mrs. Parker's face. "Not at first. MJ is a very pretty girl and they tend to have wild expectations about the kind of men they're supposed to associate with. That can be even worse in high-school. It helped that MJ become very close with Gwen."

"So MJ and Gwen hit it off?" I asked, keeping my voice neutral.

"Why, yes they did," Mrs. Parker said as she took a sip of tea. Suddenly, her eyes were not quite meeting mine.

Yeah, Mrs. Parker knew about Gwen and MJ. It's a common mistake to assume that the elderly come from an ancient world that's so less sophisticated than ours. Human reality also existed when they were young.

"Did Peter, MJ, and Gwen ever do things together?" Marie asked.

There was another hesitation before Mrs. Parker answered. "Actually, they had another friend - a young fellow named Harry Osborn. The four of them would go places. They also worked on school projects and did homework together. The others depended on Peter to help them with their schoolwork. Perhaps they depended on him a bit too much, but he was happy to help. For so long, he didn't have many friends."

"Mrs. Parker, did the four of them ever get in any kind of trouble?" I asked.

"Why, no," Mrs. Parker said. "They were good children."

"Was there anything else that was bad, or even just unusual, that involved them?"

There was a long pause as Mrs. Parker considered my question. I noticed her eyes drift to a particular picture on the wall as something boundlessly sad seemed to creep into her.

But then she put herself under control.

"No," Mrs. Parker said.

She wasn't telling us everything.

Back on the sidewalk outside of Mrs. Parker's place, Marie and I considered our next move.

"Mrs. Parker definitely got more and more evasive as we talked," Marie said.

I nodded. "I'd say she knows about Gwen and MJ... but I think it's more than that."

"She knows about the three of them - or at least she suspects," Marie told me, "but there's no way an old fashioned lady like Mrs. Parker is going to talk about that. And did you see where Mrs. Parker looked after you asked her if anything bad ever happened to the kids?"

I nodded. "Oh, yeah. Right at a picture of the deceased Mr. Parker - Peter's uncle."

Marie glanced across the street, checking out the street numbers posted on the houses. The Stacy residence was just northwest of the Parker house.

"Well... do you suppose that the local police captain might know something useful?" Marie asked grimly.

I nodded my head. "Yeah, but he's not likely to be home at this hour."

We checked anyway. Nobody was home.

"We'll double-back tonight," I told Marie. "For right now, let's see if we can get in touch with Harry Osborn."

We had to go to Manhattan to talk to Osborn. It turned out that he was rich. Or rather, his father was. Marie and I were both surprised when we found out that Harry was the son of the famous Norman Osborn - the lord and master of the Osborn Corporation. Norman Osborn was famous for his inventive genius. In certain circles, he was also known for his ruthless business practices.

Harry worked at his father's business, but once my phone-call finally worked its way through a phalanx of switch-board operators and secretaries, he made time to see us. We met in the guest room of a private club. The club was right down the street from the office building where Harry worked.

Osborn was as well dressed as you would expect. He was moderately handsome, medium height and weight, and seemed to be more fit than you might expect for a career desk-jockey. His hair was a little unusual - it was sort of a ginger-brown color and tightly curled. I've seen pictures of Norman Osborn, so I knew Harry had inherited that particular trait from his father.

"You say this is about Mr. Parker's murder?" he asked. We'd talked for a while on the phone before he agreed to meet with us.

"We're working a case and Mr. Parker's murder came up," I told Harry. "We'd like to ask you some questions."

Harry smiled grimly. "If it helps find the man who killed Ben Parker, ask any question you want."

"Just tell us what you remember," Marie said.

Harry frowned thoughtfully, then he started talking.

"I'm friends with Peter Parker. Pete lost his mother and father when he was young, but his aunt and uncle took him in. Ben Parker was Pete's uncle, but when you get down to it, he was really Pete's father."

"Ben and Pete had an argument about something stupid. Pete got mad and took off. Me and some friends met in a local diner - it's called "The Queen of Queens" - to talk it over with Pete. We were really just letting Pete blow off some steam."

Then Harry sighed. "It was all stupid, juvenile, stuff. You know, when we sat down in that diner, the four of us were just kids, but we were about to do a lot of growing up."

"We heard a shot. At first, I didn't know exactly what it was. I remember thinking that it was a truck backfire, but an unusually loud one. But there was a girl with us who's father is a cop. She recognized it."

"Maybe it was stupid, but I went to the door and peeked out. Not that far away - less than thirty feet - I could see Ben Parker lying on the sidewalk. Blood was already pooling around him. A guy with a gun was kneeling next to him and going through Ben's wallet. He looked angry. Then he threw the wallet away and ran off down an alley."

"I yelled for Pete and ran out the door. The others followed me. I got to Mr. Parker first and... and I couldn't figure out what to do. He was bleeding like crazy from a chest wound."

"Then Pete got there. We tried to help Mr. Parker, but there was nothing we could do. I tried to plug the hole in his chest with my handkerchief, while Pete tried to comfort his uncle."

Then Harry's face twisted in emotion. "At least their last words weren't the angry ones from the argument."

"Mr. Parker died while we were trying to help him. Pete... well... Pete took it hard."

Harry had a difficult time going on. The rules of masculinity didn't allow him to say that his friend had broken down.

Then Harry sighed and ran a well-manicured hand through his hair. "I should have ran after the guy who shot Mr. Parker. I should have, but we spent so much time trying to save Mr. Parker. And then Pete needed my help..."

"Mr. Osborn, the guy had a gun," I said as gently as I could. "If you'd caught up with him, you probably would have ended up just like Ben Parker."

Harry nodded, but I could tell he wasn't convinced. In the end, we are our worst critics.

Marie glanced at me. I made a tiny negative gesture with my head. There was a problem with Osborn's story, but I didn't want to make a big deal of it. At least not yet.

"Did you get a good look at the killer?" Marie asked. That was a more neutral question.

"A white male, tall, dark hair, dressed like a working man." Harry said - recited really - in a voice that was half-sad and half-angry. "If I had a penny for every time I've said that to the police..."

"You said when you ran out of the diner, your friends were right behind you," I added. "Is it possible any of them got a better look at the killer?"

Harry shrugged. "Pete didn't - he was focused on his uncle. Of the others, one stayed with me and Pete. The other ran past us and looked down the alley. Later on, she told me she got a good look at the guy when he turned the corner. She told the cops what she saw."

Marie and I ended up on a park bench, watching the locals feed the pigeons.

"So what does our case have to do with Ben Parker's murder?" Marie asked.

I gave her a long look. "I didn't say it did."

Marie shook her head. "Uh-uh, sugar. You either have a gut feeling, or you're seeing a connection that I'm missing. Which is it?"

"It's a gut feeling," I admitted, "but there's something hinky about the interviews we've done. It's got me thinking."

Marie cocked her head. "You mean how Harry avoided identifying the two persons who were with him and Parker? I caught that. One of them - the girl who's father is a cop - was obviously Gwen."

I nodded. "And if we get a look at the police report, I'm willing to bet we'll find out that the other was MJ Watson."

Marie nodded in agreement. "That makes sense. The four of them were supposed to be pretty tight back then."

"Okay, here's something else Harry wasn't exactly clear about. Suppose the carefully unnamed Gwen Stacy and MJ Watson see Benjamin Parker dying. Which one stays with Mr. Parker in his last moments and which one goes to see if she can get a better look at the guy with a gun?"

Marie didn't hesitate. "Gwen Stacy stays with Ben Parker. She's known him her entire life - he's the sweet gentleman from next door who's also the adoptive father of her oldest friend. MJ Watson has only known Ben for about a year or so. She's the one who kept going and looked down the alleyway."

"But we still don't have anything solid," I said. "And why is Osborn shading the truth?"

"So far, we've been avoiding talking to Parker, Stacy, or Watson," Marie noted. "Is it time to get more direct?"

"Not yet," I told her.

We couldn't get in touch with MJ Watson's parents. They're latest residence of record was in Manhattan, but it turned out they were out of town. Her father had a temporary teaching position in Philadelphia, filling in for a professor who was on leave. They weren't expected to be home for a few weeks.

So Marie and I headed back to Queens. We were still planning to see if we could talk to Gwen's father.

Since we had some time to kill, we went to where Ben Parker had died. Of course, there really wasn't anything to see, but Marie and I are private eyes and sometimes we just can't help ourselves. We have to see things for ourselves.

The spot were Ben Parker - by all accounts a decent man with a loving family - had died was just another patch of cracked sidewalk. The people walking up and down the street didn't pause as they walked over the place where Parker had breathed his last.

I wish I could say I'd never heard that story before.

The brick-paved alley that the killer had escaped down was lined with trash-cans. A panel truck delivering crates to a stationary store was blocking access.

The diner was just down the street.

"I can see why the kids liked this place," Marie observed approvingly.

We'd stopped in at the diner for coffee. The place smelled enticing and had a good crowd of locals, so we decided to turn our stop into a late lunch. It was a good decision. The grilled cheese sandwich and chili special was good. The apple pie was fantastic.

"We still don't have anything," I told Marie.

Marie nodded. "And now I'm wondering if maybe we've stirred the pot too much. Mrs. Parker is probably going to phone Peter as soon as he gets home from work."

"That's not too big of a problem," I countered. "We've kept our client's name out of it. And we haven't made it obvious that we're really focused on MJ."

We dawdled over coffee until after six, then we headed to Captain Stacy's home.

He opened the door as soon as we knocked.

Lucy pretty much nailed her description of Captain Stacy: he was handsome in a craggy and distinguished way. I'd say he was in his late fifties, but his hair was still more black than gray. Age had put some weight on him, but he carried it well and I was willing to bet that he could throw an effective punch if the need ever arose.

Marie and I were standing on the porch. Captain Stacy was blocking the doorway. He was dressed in a white shirt and dark suit pants. He didn't have on a tie and there were a pair of tattered slippers on his feet.

I couldn't see Stacy's right hand. Therefore, I made a point of keeping my hands very visible and not making any sudden moves. A police officer with Captain Stacy's seniority inevitably makes a lot of enemies over the years.

I had my PI license in my hand. I pulled it out just before we knocked on the door. After the door opened, I flashed it at Captain Stacy and then we identified ourselves.

Stacy examined us carefully. The part where he noticed that I was packing heat was obvious.

"You want to talk to me, see me at the precinct," he growled irritably.

"It's about your daughter and MJ Watson," Marie said.

I jerked my head across the street, towards the Parker home. "And we've talked to Mrs. Parker."

Captain Stacy's bushy eyebrows crawled up his forehead. Then he made a quick decision and stepped away from the door. The gun in his hand was a long-barreled .44 revolver. He tucked it away into a box that was on a table next to the door.

"C'mon in," he ordered.

Captain Stacy's house wasn't as neat as Mrs. Parker's. And all the furniture was beginning to look worn and dusty. I could guess what had happened - Gwen had been the lady of the house. After she moved out, her father's house began a slow descent into decay.

However, there was one new thing in Captain Stacy's home. On a nearby bookshelf, an unframed picture of Lucy - the dancer from Remy's who we'd played strip-interrogation with - was leaning up against a set of criminology books. In the picture, Lucy was wearing more clothes than usual. And her smile was warm and friendly, rather than filled with her usual feral sensuality.

I thought it was interesting that Captain Stacy could bring out that side of her.

"Sorry to bother you," Marie said politely. She's good at that stuff.

"So what's up with Gwen?" Captain Stacy asked.

"We were hired to work a security case, and the names of your daughter and Miss Watson came up," I replied. "As far as we know, they're not in any danger, and we don't suspect them of anything. But we're worried that someone might have a problem with them."

Stacy's eyes narrowed. "Who's bothering my girl? And who's your client?"

"I don't have an answer to your first question, Captain. We're here because we're trying to figure that out. And you know I can't answer the second question without my client's permission."

"Then what brings you here?"

I took a deep breath before replying. "We're wondering if whatever is going on with Gwen and MJ started here in Queens."

"Gwen left town three years ago," Captain Stacy pointed out. "MJ left before that. Why would something from the old neighborhood become a problem all of a sudden?"

"Good question," I replied. "Apart from your job - is there anything here that might be important? Do they have any enemies? Did they maybe get involved in something illegal when she was younger?"

I half-expected Captain Stacy to get mad and throw us out, but he was a cop as well as a father. So instead, he began considering possibilities.

"No," he said eventually, but he was obviously still mulling it over.

"They were friendly with Peter Parker and Harry Osborn, weren't they?" Marie asked.

Captain Stacy nodded. "Yeah. The four of them were quite the gang for a while. Gwen and Peter have known each other since they were eight years old. The two of them became acquainted with Harry and MJ in high-school."

There was no particular change in Captain Stacy's body language or tone of voice as he talked about his daughter and MJ. I found it amusing that the police captain didn't know his daughter's biggest secret, but the nice little old lady just across the street did.

The good book has a point when it says that there are none so blind as those who will not see.

"Can you think of anything odd that involved all of them? Something that sticks out?"

Captain Stacy immediately nodded.

"Yeah. Ben Parker's murder."

Captain Stacy's eyes got the "way-back" look of a detail-oriented man remembering something from the past.

"Ben Parker was Peter's uncle. He and May raised Peter after his parent's died. God knows, they did everything they could for him. Ben and May loved that boy. And Ben turned out be a good father."

It seemed to me that Captain Stacy had been more than a neighbor to Benjamin Parker. He'd been a friend.

"Ben was killed by some punk with a revolver. It happened just a few blocks from here, in the old business district. I was one of the first cops on the scene. When I got there, all four of the kids were present - Gwen, MJ, Harry, and Peter. They all looked like hell. Peter was holding his uncle's body. We had to pry the poor kid loose."

"We found a witness who saw the actual shooting. Around sundown, a guy came out of an alley and stuck a gun in Ben's face. Ben gave up his wallet, but the perp shot him anyway. It was senseless."

"We never closed that case," Captain Stacy finished unhappily. "We didn't have a lot of leads, but we worked what we had as best we could. None of them developed. We figured the killer must have skipped town right after the killing."

"Why were the kids at the crime scene?" I asked.

Captain Stacy hesitated before answering. "Ben and Peter had some kind of fight and Peter walked out of the house. He met up with Gwen, MJ, and Harry to talk. It was probably just going to be a bull session about how their parents didn't understand them. There was a diner they all liked to hang around in, and they went there. Ben was looking for Peter - he'd probably figured Peter was at the diner - when he was killed. The kids heard the shot, looked outside, and saw Ben dying on the sidewalk."

I winced.

"Yeah," Captain Stacy said, agreeing with my unvoiced feeling. "You know, Peter blamed himself for his uncle's death. Maybe he still does. I've tried to talk to him about it, but..."

Captain Stacy's voice trailed off into a helpless shrug.

"Did the kids have any enemies? Or just somebody they didn't get along with?"

A wry expression appeared on Captain Stacy's face. "Well... I wouldn't exactly call him an enemy. But there was one kid - he was sort of the neighborhood bully and general jackass. I know Pete and Harry had problems with him."

"Who?" I asked.

Flash Thompson struck me as a guy who had peaked in high-school. Actually, I found it more than a little surprising that he'd even attended high-school.

He was big, blond, and good-looking. According to Captain Stacy, he was a pretty good athlete back in school.

We found Thompson in a dingy apartment building not too far from the factory where he worked. When he saw us at his door, Thompson didn't hesitate to let us in. He had his eyes on Marie.

"Private eyes, huh?" he said after we introduced ourselves. "What do you want?"

The inside of Thompson's tiny apartment was actually reasonably clean, and the walls were decorated with sports memorabilia. He seemed to be a Yankees fan. There was no sign that anyone else was living with him.

My eyes focused on a photograph. It was of a baseball team and Thompson was standing in the second row.

He noticed where I was looking.

"The Albany Minutemen," Thompson said proudly. "A pretty good minor league team. I pitched for them for a couple of years."

Okay, so maybe Thompson actually peaked right after high-school.

"We're working a case," Marie told him. "It involves Ben Parker's murder."

Thompson's trying-to-be-charming smile wavered. Then he dropped it completely and shook his head. "Yeah. That was bad."

"We heard that you knew the kids who saw what happened," I added.

Thompson nodded as he gestured towards a ratty couch. Marie and I sat down. Then Thompson pulled a wooden chair away from a tiny table and also sat down.

"Most of them have moved out of town," he told us, "but a guy named Harry Osborn - he's Norman Osborn's son - still lives in the city."

"That's how we understand it," Marie said. "Did any of them ever talk about it? The killing, I mean."

Thompson hesitated for a while. "I didn't spend a whole lot of time with those guys. They didn't have much use for me."

"What do you mean by that?" Marie asked.

Thompson shrugged uncomfortably. "Osborn had money. Petey had brains. Gwen and MJ had talent. All I had was muscle. I just didn't have a lot in common with them."

That was actually way more introspective than I would have given Thompson credit for.

Marie gave Thompson her best charming smile, "Really, Flash, are you saying you never tried to get friendly with MJ Watson?"

Thompson grinned back. "We dated a few times, but she didn't seem to be all that interested. So I moved on to the next fish in the sea. But we still talked every know and then. You never know when a girl might change her mind."

"How about Gwen Stacy?" I asked.

Thompson shook his head. "I wasn't the guy she was interested in. That was Parker. Go figure."

"You didn't like Parker," I said. It wasn't a question.

"Parker was the smartest guy I ever met," Thompson told me very flatly. "And he wasn't shy about making sure that everyone knew it. I didn't mind the fact that he would be going places I'd never have the chance to go, but I didn't like having it shoved in my face."

You could see that Thompson had just revealed a little more of himself than he liked. He bought himself some time by getting up and pulling a bottle of beer out of an icebox. He held it up to us in silent invitation.

"No, thanks," Marie and I said more-or-less simultaneously. Thompson used a key to open the bottle, and then sat down again.

"Did Miss Watson ever say anything to you about the killing?" Marie asked.

Thompson gave Marie a long look. And for the first time, he wasn't undressing her with his eyes.

"She told me what she saw."

"And that was it? You never talked to any of them about Mr. Parker's death?"

Thompson smiled, but there was no humor in it. "That was it. Until two weeks ago."

"What happened last week?" I asked.

"MJ was in town - it was some sort of publicity thing for a movie she's making. I managed to a get in touch with her. Then I told her where to find the guy who killed Ben Parker."

Thompson gave us a satisfied smile.

We didn't say anything as we stared at Thompson. Thompson just smirked and drank his beer. Thompson was playing games, but I understood why. It had been a while since he'd had an audience. He hadn't heard the roar of the crowd for a long time.

"Care to expand on that a little?" I asked.

"The guy who shot Ben Parker ran down an alley and got away," Thompson said as he finished off his beer. He was a fast drinker. I figured that would be a problem for him someday - if it wasn't already. "I was on the other side of that alley. He turned the corner and ran right into me. Hell, he still had the gun in his hand. I got as good a look at him as you could get. At the time, I didn't know what was going on, but I figured it out later on."

"You didn't tell the police?" I said, trying to keep my voice neutral.

Thompson shook his head. "My family doesn't have the best history with the cops. And there was a big game coming up in a couple of days and I needed the practice time. Also, MJ told me a little later that night that she gave the cops a description. So there was no reason to get involved."

Welcome to the land of Flash Thompson logic. It actually made sense in a really self-involved way.

"So how did you know where to find the guy who killed Ben Parker?" Marie asked.

"I saw him about a month ago. Years after he killed Mr. Parker, I saw him again."

Thompson finished his story.

"I sometimes make a little spare cash as a driver for the liquor gangs. I'm not a gangster or anything, I just drive a truck. Last month, me and some friends picked up a load of booze down by the Jersey docks. That was when I saw him. He has a small gang that runs that part of the riverfront. I recognized him as soon as I saw him."

"Why didn't you call the cops?" I asked.

Thompson laughed. "In that part of New Jersey? The cops are just the biggest gang. As long as that son-of-a-bitch was paying his bribes, he wasn't going to get arrested. I thought about calling Gwen's dad, but he wouldn't have any pull with the Jersey cops. And besides, he and I never got along."

"Then why did you tell MJ?" Marie asked.

"Because now she's a bigshot movie-star. Which means she knows the people who really run things. So I figured she could talk to some of her important friends and get the G-men involved. That's the only way you're going to arrest a gangster on that side of the river."

"And that also kept you safely out of it," I said coldly.

Thompson gave me a long and hard look. "Look around. I could end up with six bullets in my chest and nobody would care. MJ doesn't live there - or at least, she doesn't anymore. She's safe. So, yeah, I kept my distance. And I plan on keeping it."

"You could have told Osborn," Marie suggested.

Thompson snorted. "When you get down to it, Harry is nothing much without daddy's money. I couldn't be sure that he'd actually do anything. And of the others... well, Petey's a wimp and Gwen is too much of a good-girl. But MJ is a lot tougher and meaner than most people realize."

"Why do you care?" I asked. "Why did you bother to get involved?"

Thompson scratched his chin as he considered my question. His eyes were hard as he looked at me. He knew I that I didn't think much of him.

"Maybe because I wanted to impress MJ one last time?" he said. "Or because I liked Mr. Parker? Or because I want Mrs. Parker to get some kind of justice before she croaks? Or because it was my last chance to make sure that Peter, Harry, MJ, and Gwen know that there's more to me than they think?"

"Go ahead and pick a reason," he finished coldly.

Rather than make our client pay for a hotel room, Marie and I took a late train home. However, we did splurge for the sleeper car.

There were no bathing facilities in our car - that would have cost a hell of a lot more - but Marie took a wash-cloth bath out of the tiny sink. Normally, I would have enjoyed watching that, but I was distracted by the case. Even when Marie undressed me and gave me the same kind of bath, I barely noticed.

We didn't have all of the details yet, but the case had broken open. When that happens, there's no other feeling in the world quite like it.

I came to my senses when I realized that Marie wasn't just washing my feet - she was about to give me a pedicure.

"What are you doing!?" I yelped as I yanked my foot back from Marie's bare lap. She was sitting on the fold-out bed across from mine.

"Nothing I haven't always wanted to do," Marie answered with a wicked smile.

For Pete's sake, there were cotton balls between my toes!

"Okay, that's unfair," I told her severely. She's always taking advantage of me when I'm concentrating.

I began yanking the cotton balls loose.

Marie regretfully put the cap back on a small bottle of nail polish.

"Do you know what's going on?" I asked.

Marie nodded. "Their injuries, the fact that they're powered, their connection to the Parker family... it makes sense."

I finished for her. "Gwen and MJ are going after the bastard who killed Ben Parker."

When we got back from New York city, Marie and I bee-lined straight towards the most dangerous pack of criminals in the world.

"That part of New Jersey is not exactly our neighborhood," Hank pointed out to us.

Hank McCoy is the second-in-command of the biggest gang in the city. His boss is a guy called Logan. Hank was the logical person to talk to if you wanted to know the latest criminal news or gossip.

"Oh, bullshit, Hank!" Marie snarled. "You know the underside of the East coast better than anyone on Earth."

Hank leaned back in his chair. He's a big block of a man with over-sized hands and feet. He's also one of the smartest guys I know - and I've met guys like Bruce Banner, Hank Pym, and Tony Stark.

"The docks in that part of New Jersey are a joke," Hank told us. "They're split up between dozens of small gangs, none of them bigger than ten or twenty men. Theoretically, they're all a part of the New York machine, but that's mostly just lip service and an agreement to not step too hard on each other's toes. Someone really should organize that mess."

"Has there been a hit lately?" I asked. "We want to know if a dock-boss was killed. It would have been within the last few days."

Then I paused before continuing. "And it might have been weird."

Hank raised an eyebrow. "'Weird'? Do you mean 'weird' as in 'powered'?"

Marie and I both nodded.

"Four days ago," Hank said. He had a suddenly interested look in his eyes. "A dockside gang in Jersey City got hit hard. A lot of them were hurt or killed, but the core of the gang - the boss and his best hitters - got away. Since then, they've lost control of their stretch of the river, and the story is that they've headed inland and are falling back on the old standard of armed robbery. I hear they hit a bank in Neptune City yesterday."

"Do you know where they're hiding out?" I asked.

"I can find out," Hank told us.

"What's the word on who hit the gang?" Marie asked.

"So far, the assumption is that some other mob took your guys down in a fight over territory, but there are some strange stories going around."

"How strange?" I asked.

"Some are saying that your friends were attacked by monsters."

"Monsters?" I repeated.

Hank nodded. "That's what we've heard."

"What kind of monsters?"

Hank just shrugged.

We hung around Hank's office until he got a call that told us where the Jersey City gang was hiding - it was a town called Lee's Crossing. Then I asked Hank if he had a current description of the gang's boss. Hank laughed and did me one better. He had a flunky bring us a photo of the guy.

The picture was of a tall and lean mook in an expensive-looking long jacket, talking to a couple of nervous-looking dockworkers. He fit the descriptions we'd heard of Ben Parker's killer, but with a few differences. He wore his hair slicked back and was a lot better dressed.

The picture was pretty good. It had the look of something taken by a surveillance professional.

I looked at Hank. "Just how big is the intelligence-gathering part of your operation?"

"Pretty big," Hank replied seriously.

Considering the resources available to Logan's gang - psychics as well as people who could turn invisible or desolid - that was a actually a pretty scary thought.

Marie was looking thoughtfully at the picture. "He botched the robbery of Ben Parker, committed a reckless murder, was forced to skip town, and then - after just a few years - he ends up running a gang of his own."

"A weird combination of incompetence and talent," Hank noted disapprovingly. "But it doesn't take a lot of smarts to build a gang in New Jersey. Just viciousness."

By then it was obvious why Hank was being so cooperative. He wanted to know what was going on.

Well, so did I.

"Do you have a name for this guy?" I asked Hank.

"He goes by Dennis Carradine," Hank said, "but he likes aliases. We don't know if that's his real name."

Marie and I got in the car and headed north. Duke was paying us to help MJ Watson. We were going to do that by preventing her and her friends from committing a murder.

Lee's Crossing is a fair-sized town, and it was a good choice for some gangsters on the run. It was big enough that newcomers wouldn't stand out too much, but not big enough to have a turf-conscious local gang. And the cops were likely to be a bit amateurish.

Unfortunately, it was a place where we had no contacts. Finding the gang might not be easy, especially if they were being smart enough to lay low.

"What's the plan when we find them?" Marie asked.

"We take them down," I said. "They should have something incriminating - the loot from their bank-job will do nicely. After that, we put a bow on them and deliver them to the police. Once they're in the jug, Gwen and MJ will just have to call off their little revenge expedition and go back to being rich and famous."

Marie had come up with a good cover for us. We were a pair of well-off dames from the big-city who were on a driving tour. Lee's Crossing has a lot of rustic buildings - some them went back to before the Revolution - and was also surrounded by woods and fields. Actually, it was rather picturesque place. Our cover gave us an excuse to drive all over town and the surrounding area, and ask odd questions.

However, because of our cover, I had to dress more traditionally. So I was actually in a one-piece dress. It had been a while, and the dress seemed awfully light - almost like I was wearing nothing but underwear. Even worse, I couldn't wear my shoulder holster, so I was carrying a purse. My .45 and spare magazines were tucked inside.

I also had a hefty Derringer in a thigh holster and a switch-blade in a sleeve sheath. I've always figured that the Boy Scout motto of "Be Prepared" applied to life in general.

Marie loved how I was dressed and couldn't keep her hands off of me. She took a lot of joy out of keeping a hand up my skirt and running it up and down my legs as we drove up to Lee's Crossing.

We were in town less than a half-hour before we ran into our latest surprise.

"I don't believe this!" Marie hissed.

We were cruising the downtown, just getting the lay of the land, when we saw them.

It was MJ Watson and Gwen Stacy - as big as life. They were standing outside a local pharmacy, looking around curiously. MJ was wearing a big pair of sunglasses in what I assumed was an attempt to disguise her identity. Gwen wasn't bothering with anything like that, but then she wasn't as well known as her movie-star girlfriend. They were casually dressed as middle-class tourist ladies - a lot like Marie and I, as a matter of fact. It was still hard to hide the fact that they were both hotties. No matter what, that would make them stand out.

Peter Parker was walking down the sidewalk, heading towards Gwen and MJ. Like them, he was dressed casually. He said something to the two women. Gwen reached out and took his arm, pulling Peter next to her. MJ took his other side. The three of them stood together and watched the traffic out on the street.

Then another woman appeared out of the pharmacy. She had dark hair, a thin face, and wasn't dressed as nicely as MJ and Gwen. She was wearing more masculine clothing and carrying a newspaper. She paused to say something to the trio, but as she did, her eyes continued to sweep the surrounding area.

"Dammit," I whispered as I - not too fast - turned the wheel of our car, trying to get us around a corner and out of sight.

Marie didn't make any quick movements, since that might attract attention. Instead she kept a placid look on her face as she slowly turned her head to look out the passenger window. That turned her face away from the gang in front of the pharmacy.

"Do you know the new girl?" Marie asked quietly, barely moving her lips.

"Jessica Jones," I replied as I casually glanced in the rear-view mirror. "She's a private eye out of New York city. And she's good."

By now, we were out of line-of-sight.

"Oh! I get it," Marie said after a moment's thought. "She's helping them track down our gangsters,"

"And she's apparently doing a damn fine job," I said through gritted teeth. "She got them this far."

"Do you think they spotted us?"

I shook my head. "I'm not sure."

"But her presence explains something," I added.

"What?"

"Jones does a lot of corporate work. I'll bet Harry Osborn recommended her to his friends."

Marie thought about that. "And that's why he was so hazy about Gwen and MJ being around when Ben Parker was murdered. He knows they're up to something."

I nodded.

We put a dozen blocks between ourselves and the place where we'd spotted the others. Then I pulled into a half-hidden parking spot.

"Now what?" Marie asked.

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. "We have to beat them to the prize."

"So why was Jones in a local drug-store?"

"Our gangsters were in a fight recently," I said after a moment of thought. "Some of them might be hurt."

"And Jones was checking to see if anyone new in town has been buying a lot of first-aid supplies," Marie finished. "You're right - she is good."

I nodded. "But if she's doing something like that, then she doesn't have a good handle yet on exactly where they are."

"We need to get ahead of her," Marie said.

I nodded, all the while mentally flipping through a list of options. We had to work fast.

"Wait here," Marie said. Then she got out of the car.

Across the street was a gas station. A tall and lanky teenager with a prominent Adam's apple was scraping bugs from a windshield as he gassed up a sedan. Marie waited until the boy was done and the car had driven off before she went up to him and started talking.

Marie turned on the charm. The kid was immediately dazzled. After a minute or two of conversation, she crossed the street and came back to the car. The kid stared after her.

I raised an eyebrow as Marie got back in the car.

"There's a fellow who has a shack two miles down the highway," she told me. "He's the local moonshiner. The sheriff is his grand-nephew, so the law leaves him alone. Just about everyone in the county buys from him."

I smiled and then leaned over and gave Marie a kiss on the forehead. That was really pretty clever. After what had happened to them over the last few days, our gangsters almost surely needed a drink.

The moonshiner's cabin was on a dirt-track, about a mile off the highway, and tucked into a hollow in a low ridge-line. Irregular patches of corn-fields surrounded the cabin, but pine trees loomed on the slopes of the ridge. The cabin was pretty shabby, but it seemed to me it would outlast its owner. And that was probably good enough for him.

As we parked out car, we could smell the distinctive odor of a still cooking somewhere off in the trees behind the shack.

Marie knocked on the door, introduced herself as soon as it opened, and within a minute she and the moonshiner were excitedly talking about moonshine recipes. Marie's originally from Mississippi and she speaks fluent hick.

Within another minute, the old fellow had escorted us to the rickety barn where he stored his product. Then he began sharing out samples of his wares, all the while giving us a detailed description of the mixtures that made up each batch. I really didn't know what he was talking about, but Marie didn't seem to have any trouble following him.

The old man selling the 'shine was named Hanshaw. He was a short and skinny fellow, at least seventy years old, dressed in baggy work pants that really needed to be washed, and an arm-less undershirt that was spectacularly stained. Shaving was apparently something he did about once a month. Bathing probably took place on a similar schedule.

We eventually gave him our cover story. He seemed intrigued by the idea that we were interested in the history of the region. He quickly reeled off a list of locations we should visit. He was obviously enjoying the opportunity to chat with a pair of women. I have to admit that I began to feel a little guilty about the way we were exploiting his obvious loneliness.

"By the by, Mr. Hanshaw, have you run into a pack of tough guys 'round here?" Marie eventually asked. "They'd have shown up in the last few days. Out-of-towners from around Newark. I makes sense that they would have wanted a snoot."

The old man frowned, but nodded immediately. "Oh, yeah. Two of 'em showed up three days back. They both looked like they'd been in a fight. And they also said they had friends. I can't say I liked the look of them, but their money was green. They bought a dozen jars of my hardest stuff."

Then the old man hesitated before going on. "Now, Miss Marie, you and your friend might wanna be careful. Those boys struck me as a bad bunch. I don't wanna mind your business for you, but I wouldn't get too taken by the big money those fellas are throwing around. I don't think it's in their character to treat a woman like a proper lady."

The old fellow seemed genuinely worried for us. Coming from such a ragged character, it was charming.

"We know, sir," I assured him. "We've heard of them. They're creeps."

Mr. Hanshaw looked pleased. "I knew you were good girls," he said with a relieved smile.

"Do you know where they're staying?" Marie asked. "We don't particularly want to run into them."

Mr. Hanshaw responded immediately. "I hear they've renting the old Heinerman place. That's a farmhouse located north of here, near Horseshoe creek. That's another five or six miles up the highway, and about a half-mile to the west. Just stay off of the north highway and you should be fine."

"Thanks, Mr. Hanshaw!" Marie told him with a bright smile.

Actually, the old man's moonshine was pretty good. I ended up buying a half-dozen jars.

A few miles down the road, we had a road-side conversation with a farm boy who was driving cattle from one pasture to another. He gave us specific directions to the old Heinerman place. He also timidly warned us to stay away. He didn't like the look of the guys who were staying there.

It was becoming clear to me that the local folks had pretty good instincts.

According to the boy, the Heinerman family had died out about twenty years ago. The farm was eventually repossessed by the county for back taxes. The farmland was sold off. A rental company operated by the local bank occasionally rented out the farmhouse.

The Heinerman farmhouse was located on a low hill, overlooking a creek. It wasn't in the best repair, but looked serviceable. It also had an unobstructed view of the road leading to it. Between the farmhouse and the highway, there was nothing but flat farm fields.

"No way we can get closer without being spotted," Marie told me with a shake of her head.

I nodded as I continued to examine the farmhouse with my binoculars. We'd pulled off the highway and driven part-way down the gravel and dirt road that lead to the farmhouse, but we were keeping our distance.

There were a couple of dark sedans parked in front of the farmhouse. One was in good shape, but the other had a starred windshield and more than a few dents. There was a guy leaning against one of the cars. I didn't see a weapon, but if he had a handgun tucked into his belt, I wouldn't have been able to spot it at that range.

"We're not sneaking up on these guys," I finally sighed.

Marie squinted up at the sun. It was late afternoon. "Normally, I'd say we should approach them at night. But it's some time until sundown. And..."

"...and our gang of vigilantes could be coming down the road any second," I finished for her.

Marie nodded in agreement. Then she glanced at me. "Y'know, that's been bothering me. Watson, Stacy, and Parker don't really strike me as the vigilante type."

I nodded. "Respectable families. Successful careers. And they come from a place where law and order is - more-or-less - the way things work. For Pete's sake, Gwen's dad is a police officer! You're right, it doesn't seem to fit. But people can be hard to figure sometimes. Peter and Gwen grew up with Ben Parker. MJ didn't know Mr. Parker as long as her friends, but she might just be following their lead."

"Yeah," Marie agreed, "but here's another thing. What the heck is up with those three? I mean... if Gwen and MJ are a couple, where exactly does Peter fit in?"

I shrugged helplessly. "I'm not sure. Maybe Peter dated Gwen and MJ when they were younger? And once the two ladies took a different turn in their lives, Peter stayed friendly with them?"

Marie shook her head. "Those weren't just friendly kisses we saw outside of Gwen's apartment. They also didn't look like 'once upon a time we were close'. Whatever is going on with those three is right here and now."

I had to admit that Marie had a point. "So there's more to Peter than is visible to the eye? They're his two girls and he's somehow keeping them both happy at the same time? Or it could be that they're a threesome. It's rare, but I've seen it happen."

"Yeah..." Marie said uncertainly, "but just look at them! As a group, the three of them just don't seem to fit. Peter's pretty ordinary, Gwen is a real cutey, and MJ is gorgeous. Parker is a scientist and a bookworm who only seems to be at home in the lab. Gwen and MJ are high-profile performers who hobnob with the rich and beautiful. MJ is well on her way to being world famous. Gwen is locally known. Nobody has heard of Parker outside of his specialty - or probably ever will. MJ is rich, Gwen is well-off, and while Parker probably makes decent money, I don't think he's on the same scale as the girls - particularly MJ."

"Yeah, it doesn't sound like it would work."

"And then there's what Josh told us," Marie added. "Gwen and MJ are some sort of powered, but they aren't mutants. Is it possible that Peter is too?"

"That could be what's holding them together," I said slowly. "That makes a lot of sense."

Marie nodded in agreement. Then she gave the distant farmhouse a frustrated look. "Okay, we have to get this over with, but we can't surprise the bad guys. So what do we do?"

I opened my purse - I hate the damn things - pulled out my .45, and chambered a round. Then I put the weapon back in my purse. However, I didn't close the purse. Then I tapped my forearm and thigh, making sure that my backup weapons were in place and ready to go.

"Damsels in distress?" Marie asked as she took her revolver out of her purse, opened the cylinder, put a loose round into the only empty chamber - the one she normally kept underneath the revolver's hammer - and then closed the cylinder. Then she leaned into the car and put her weapon on the seat bench, in between the driver and passenger positions.

"Damsels in distress," I agreed.

Marie unbuttoned the top few buttons of her dress. She was showing a lot of cleavage and even a trace of her bra. Then she got behind the wheel and pulled the side of her skirt over her revolver.

As big as brass, we drove right up to the farmhouse. Marie was driving. I was in the passenger's seat, trying to keep a particularly clueless expression on my face.

The guy in front of the house stirred when he saw us approach. Then he turned his head and called into the house. After a second, the front door opened. I could see a form standing inside the doorway, but couldn't make out any details. A window curtain also flicked to the side, and then closed.

At least three, I thought to myself. I was willing to bet that there was more.

The guy in front picked up the jacket that was sitting on the hood of the car next to him. He held it draped over his left forearm, almost certainly concealing a gun in his belt. He could get to it with a right-handed cross-draw.

Marie pulled the car into a ninety degree turn and rolled down her window. There was a light headwind that kept the dust we'd kicked up from rolling over us.

"Hey!" she called to the sentry, "we're lost! Could you give us some directions?"

The guy in front of the house blinked in surprise when he saw Marie. Then a wolfish smile came over his homely face. I noticed that he had a nasty split lip and a bandage on the side of his face.

I put my hand in my purse.

The gangster came closer. Once he was close enough, his eyes focused on Marie's cleavage. By that time, he was completely distracted and paying absolutely no attention to me. I could have been manning a heavy machine gun where I was sitting and he wouldn't have noticed me.

Still smiling, the gangster put his hands on the edge of the driver's side window.

Then Marie put one of her hands over his.

The gangster stiffened, his entire body going rigid as Marie's power knocked him silly. Then Marie grabbed him by his belt and pulled him towards her, pinning him against the body of the car.

"Hey!" Marie yelped. "Keep your hands to yourself!"

Anybody inside the farmhouse couldn't really see what was happening. At a quick glance, it looked like their friend was trying to dry-hump our car.

"Dammit!" the guy inside the door yelled. Then he stepped out onto the porch. He had a Tommy gun in his hands. He also had a bandage around his head and an impressive black eye.

"Dave! Cut it out!" he yelled at his supposedly misbehaving friend. "What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

"Help!" Marie screamed. I opened the door and got out, a horrified expression on my face as I yelled, "Cut it out you creep!"

Holding the Tommy gun in one hand, the gunner on the porch ran over to his buddy, grabbed him by the collar and yanked backwards. Marie let go of the now-unconscious Dave and he flew backwards. Our rescuer was surprised by the lack of resistance and stumbled a couple of steps back towards the farmhouse.

He was even more surprised when he found himself looking down the big barrel of Marie's handgun.

"Put the gun down," Marie said very flatly.

The gunner didn't drop his weapon, but he was keeping it in a carefully neutral position in his off hand. That was a dangerous decision on his part. It's not a good idea to be merciful to people with automatic weapons.

And there was something else. He was carefully examining our faces. He was looking for something.

I had my .45 focused on the window where I'd previously seen motion. The curtain flicked open again and I put a pair of shots through the glass. There was a shout from inside, but it didn't sound like I'd hit whoever had yelled. People who've been shot are a lot more whiny.

I wasn't paying attention to the Tommy gunner. If he had reacted to my shots and lifted his weapon, Marie would have been forced to cut him down. Instead, he did nothing - and got to live.

Actually, I was kinda hoping that Marie would just shoot him.

"How many?" I asked Marie as I kept my eyes on the house.

"Two more inside," Marie replied. She'd gotten a peek into the mind of the guy she knocked out with her power. She knew what he knew.

"C'mon out!" I yelled. "Hand's up and no weapons!"

"Rocco?" someone called from inside. He sounded scared.

"Is it them?" another voice added. He sounded even more scared than the other guy.

Rocco was apparently the guy with the Tommy gun.

"Who are you?" Rocco asked tensely. I didn't like the sound of that. We had him dead to rights, but there was a desperation about him. It was the kind of thing that could make a man decide that he would fight even when the odds were stacked way against him. I could see him suddenly lifting his gun, praying that maybe he'd be faster than Marie. I was willing to bet that particular prayer wouldn't be answered.

"Private eyes," I told him.

"And - even more important - we're the guys pointing guns at you," Marie added irritably. "Put that damned Chicago piano down!"

"Give it up and nobody gets hurt," I told him. "But if we start throwing lead, all bets are off. And you'll die first."

Rocco seemed uncertain. Now he was staring at me.

I tried again. "We aren't cops. We don't care about you guys. We don't care about the bank job. We just want your boss."

Rocco made a decision. Then he leaned over and put his Tommy gun on the ground.

"It's not them," Rocco called back into the house. "Come on out. No funny stuff."

"Oh, thank Mary, Joseph, and Jesus," came the first voice from inside. He sounded infinitely relieved.

Two more gangsters came out of the house. They had their hands up. Like the other two, the new guys were battered and bruised.

Their boss - the man who had killed Ben Parker - wasn't with them.

We had all four of our prisoners hand-cuffed. Three of them were sitting on the porch, the one Marie had knocked out was laying on his stomach. He was still out cold.

Marie flicked a fingernail against Rocco's nose. He grimaced.

"What the hell is wrong with you!?" Marie yelled at him angrily. "I was about to kill you! Was it some stupid guy thing!? You weren't going to let a girl tell you what to do!?"

With my hand on my heart, I swear that Rocco checked out Marie's rack before he answered.

"Things have been weird lately," he grumbled at Marie.

Then he glanced at me. "You're not cops. Maybe we can make a deal? All we wanna do is walk."

I ignored him as I looked at Marie. "Where's their boss?"

Marie shrugged. "In town. He's supposed to be lining up another bank job. He and these four are all that's left of the gang. They lost a lot of guys in Jersey City, and some more ran away after they got here."

"What happened to them back in Jersey City?"

"It was weird," Rocco growled mostly to himself.

Marie shrugged again and nodded to the guy she'd knocked out. "He went down early in the fight and didn't see much. And the other guys wouldn't talk about it."

"Fucking weird," Rocco whispered. He eyes were blankly staring off into the distance.

One of the gangsters who'd been inside the house began to cry. After a few seconds, the other guy began laughing. It didn't sound like a particularly healthy laugh.

"What the hell happened to you guys?" I demanded.

Rocco's gaze snapped back to the here and now and he looked up at me.

"Spiders," he told me. His eyes were back to being blank again.

Marie and I looked at each.

"Spiders," Rocco repeated for no particular reason.

"And it was weird," he finished.

We had to get back to tracking the boss, and we really didn't have the time to babysit Rocco and his friends. We couldn't even give them to the cops. The police wouldn't just let us drop them off and walk away. They'd want explanations.

Shooting the gangsters in the head, while efficient, didn't really strike me as an acceptable option.

By then, the guy who had been crying was now laughing softly to himself. The guy who had been laughing had broke down into tears. It was getting harder and harder to see these guys as any kind of threat to anybody.

"Here's the deal," I told Rocco. "I saw a rural bus-stop at a crossroads about two miles down the highway. We'll drop the four of you there with twenty bucks and the clothes on your backs. No guns, knives, or any other weapons - and we're going to disable your cars. If you take the first bus to anywhere but here, then I won't mention to the state patrol that maybe they can trace you from that bus-stop. If I you show up back in Lee's Crossing, I'll blow your brains out. Particularly you, Rocco. You have a bad habit of not doing as you're told."

"Deal," Rocco said without hesitation. "This job isn't really working out."

We uncuffed Rocco and the boys and left them at the bus-stop. In the process, I made some threats about how I would track them down and deal with them if I ever heard that they were back in the crime racket. I didn't really have a lot of hope that any of them would go straight, but something had scared the living hell out of them. So it was worth a try. Maybe they were actually ready to do something honest for a living.

There was about a thousand bucks of neatly bundled money in the trunk. It was most of the loot from the Neptune City bank job. I'd eventually figure out a way to get it back to the bank. A lot of people will tell you that bankers are the biggest crooks of all. They might have a point, but the money in the banks belongs to ordinary people.

"Why didn't you shoot Rocco?" I asked Marie as we drove away. Glancing into the rear-view mirror, I could see the four gangsters standing mournfully by the side of the road.

"The guy I knocked out thought a lot of Rocco," she answered. "He saw him as a big brother, rather than just another guy in the gang. Rocco's really been carrying them since whatever happened in Jersey City. Since then, the boss was just planning jobs, giving orders, and breaking heads if anyone even looked at him sideways. He's crazy about having lost his territory and is getting meaner and more dangerous by the day. Everyone's been getting more and more scared of him, and a few of the guys who came here with him took off because of that. The only reason my guy didn't run away is because he wouldn't leave Rocco behind."

It's a problem when the people you're pointing guns at become people instead of targets.

"Next time we're in a situation like that - just shoot," I told Marie softly. The thought of losing her will always haunt me. I let Marie out from behind her desk and took her out onto the streets with me. If something ever happens to her while we we're working a case, it will be my fault.

Marie nodded, but I knew she would still do whatever she thought was right.

Marie had a nice clear memory of the gang-boss and his car. The guy she'd knocked out had seen the boss just that morning, right before he got into his car and drove to town. Fortunately for us, the boss was a bit of a clothes-horse - not an uncommon thing for a street thug who'd ascended to the rank of head creep. He was wearing a pricey suit and expensive shoes. That sort of thing would stand out in Lee's Crossing.

So we fell back to old fashioned shoe-leather work. Marie and I went around the downtown of Lee's Crossing, asking if anyone had seen our friend. Our "friend", of course, matched the description of Ben Parker's murderer - the man going by the name of Dennis Carradine. While doing so, we kept an eye out for MJ and her friends.

It was after sundown when we finally got lucky.

"Yeah, I saw him," a guy selling hot-dogs out of a cart told us. Because of the hour, he was in the process of closing down his cart.

"A guy dressed like that walked into that hotel just across the street. He had the slicky hair you mentioned, too. It was just a few minutes ago."

Marie frowned. I felt the same way. Why was our guy going into a hotel? He had a rented house just outside of town.

The hot-dog salesman noticed our skepticism. "He had a gal with him," he added with a sly smile.

Something clicked. A resigned look came over Marie's face

"Redhead or blonde?" I asked.

"Redhead," the hot-dog salesman said. "A real looker. You know, she reminded me a little of that actress... what's her name? Walker? Watson?"

I cost us a few bucks to get the hotel clerk to give us the room number. It was on the fourth floor - which was also the top floor of the hotel. The hotel didn't have an elevator, so Marie and I hoofed it up the stairs.

At the door, we paused and pulled out our guns. Inside, I heard something move. Then there was a scraping sound - I recognized it as a window being opened.

I carefully tested the doorknob. The door wasn't locked.

Then I threw open the door...

Our car was parked in an alleyway.

My hands were shaking as I opened the trunk of the car and pulled out one of the jars of 'shine I'd bought from Mr. Hanshaw. After unscrewing the lid, I took a long and burning slug from the jar. Then I handed the jar to Marie and she did the same. It seemed to calm her trembling.

We then proceeded to kill most of the jar. All the while, we were nervously scanning the roofs and walls of the surrounding buildings. We also had our weapons in hand, which is not the smartest thing to do when you're gulping down raw whiskey, but there was no way we could leave ourselves defenseless.

Then Jessica Jones came around the corner. A streetlight illuminated her as she stood in the mouth of the alleyway. She had her hands open and her arms out from her sides to show that she was unarmed.

"Dom? Is that you?" she called out.

"Hey, Jess," I called back.

Jones walked towards us. When she got closer, I could see that her eyes were haunted. I could make a really good guess what she'd seen that had put her in that condition.

"Oh, thank God," she said in obvious relief when she saw the jar of 'shine in my hand. "Can I have some of that?"

I offered her the jar. There are times when it simply isn't right to deny someone a drink.

An hour later, we were still in the alley. We'd found various things to sit on that were more or less clean as we passed the jar around.

We hadn't really said anything to each other. We just drank steadily. The first jar was long gone. We were working on the second.

"I didn'a know wha' I was get'n myself into," Jones slurred. She was holding her head in her hands.

"Tell me 'bout it," I replied blurrily.

Marie looked at us both, then she gently took the jar of moonshine from me and screwed the lid back on. It's scary how well Marie can handle her liquor.

"Let's get something to eat," she said quietly.

Jones and I didn't argue. We got to our feet and stumbled our way down the alley. There was a restaurant just around the corner.

Two hours later, we were still in the restaurant. The food was mediocre, but the coffee was decent. Between us, we drank something like a gallon. Jones and I were still drunk, but at least by then it wasn't obvious.

It was actually after closing time. The waitress had dropped a pointed hint just a moment before.

Conversations between private investigators can get strange sometimes. Especially if they're both working on parallel cases. We have a professional responsibility to keep the interests of our clients secret and, as a result, there's only so much that we can say to each other.

For example: Jones couldn't ask - and we couldn't reveal - who we were working for. On the other hand, we pretty much knew who Jones was working for, but it would be rude to admit it, or to ask for more information.

However, all three of us had something on our mind. And we all pretty much knew what it was. There were only one reason to be wandering aimlessly around Lee's Crossing, looking and acting like shell-shocked riflemen from the Great War.

"What did you see?" Jones eventually asked. It was the question both sides had been working up the nerve to ask for quite some time. I give Jones credit for getting there first.

I let out a long breath before replying. "We were tracking this guy. We found him in a hotel and opened the door to his room. And there was a... a... thing in the room. It was dragging the guy we were following out the window."

"He was paralyzed or something," Marie added softly.

"He couldn't seem to move or say anything," I continued, "but his eyes were looking at us. He wanted us to help him."

"But you didn't help," Jones said quietly.

I shook my head. "No. We were... startled. By the time we got over that, the guy and the... the... thing who'd grabbed him were out the window."

"There was another of those things outside," Marie said. She was picking at her second piece of pie with a fork. "It was on the wall outside. It helped haul the guy out the window."

"How about you?" I asked.

Jones finished the dregs of her coffee. "My job here was done. I'd tracked down the suspect I'd been hired to find. The... the... people I was working with said I should leave, but something was bothering me. I just wasn't sure what they wanted the suspect for. It occurred to me that they might have something violent in mind. I mean, none of them looked exactly dangerous, but you never know."

Then Jones paused before continuing. "So I stuck around and followed them. And it turned out I was right. I saw..."

Jones stopped again. She couldn't seem to go on.

Eventually, she forced herself to say something, but her voice was now a whisper. Marie and I had to strain to hear her.

"Two of the people I'd been working with climbed up onto a rooftop. And I don't mean they used a ladder or anything, they just climbed straight up the wall with their fingers and toes. I circled the building and found a fire-escape on the other side. I used it to get up there, and then peeked over the edge of the roof. They were still on the roof, but they'd taken off their clothes and they were... changing. They were changing into something else. When they were done, they weren't people anymore."

"Then they took off over the rooftops - all of those legs moving in a kind of smooth and regular sequence as they climbed and crawled. Eventually they ended up on the wall of the hotel. Then a third one pushed somebody out of one of the hotel's window. The two outside caught him. After that, the three of them just skittered off, carrying that poor bastard with them. I lost them in the darkness."

Jones rubbed her eyes. "I had my gun out and I thought about getting involved. Maybe I should have. But I decided it wouldn't be a good idea."

"I saw you guys through the hotel window, standing in the hotel room with your guns in your hands. That's how I knew you were in town, Domino."

I figured I could afford to tell Jones something that would at least help her sleep better at night. "The guy your clients carried off was a murderer," I said to her. "Whatever's happened to him, I won't say that he had it coming, but he wasn't exactly an innocent victim."

Jones considered what I'd just said. You could see her making connections in her head.

"Wait," she said eventually. "Is he the guy that murdered Benjamin Parker?"

I apparently wasn't the only PI who checked up on his clients.

I nodded.

Jones didn't exactly look relieved, but it did seem as if some of the weight on her shoulders had been lifted.

After we left the restaurant, we said our goodbyes to Jones. Then she headed off down the street.

There was no way Marie and I could stay in Lee's Crossing. So we drove twenty miles to the next town, parked our car, and slept in the back. It was psychologically impossible for us to get a hotel room. It would have brought up too many recent memories.

That night, I had strange nightmares filled with eight-legged monsters tracking me through labyrinthine streets and alleys. They spun webs and crawled up and down walls, their mandibles working eagerly as they pursued me.

So Marie and I slept poorly, and I had a terrible hangover the next morning. Marie drove us the rest of the way home.

When we got back, I told Marie I had something to take care of. I said she and Sooraya should man the office until I got back.

Then I drove out to MJ Watson's place. I'm not sure if I wanted her to be home or not, but I knew that I had to see the case through to end.

It turned out that MJ was home.

A handsome Mexican woman in her middle years answered the door. She patiently heard out my request to see the lady of the house, was perhaps a bit over-impressed when I flashed her my PI license, and then invited me inside.

Mary Jane Watson was on the back patio, sitting in a cane chair as she read a copy of "Variety". She was dressed in silk pajamas and her hair was done up in a towel - she'd apparently just got out of the bath. The patio itself was elegantly designed and surrounded by flower gardens and decorative stonework. I found myself approving of MJ's taste.

This was the first time I'd met MJ face-to-face. Yes, she was a beautiful woman, but she was more than that. This town is full of pretty ladies, but she was something special. Even knowing what I knew about her, I felt the pull of her attraction. Any man - or woman - in her life would have truly hit the jackpot.

Then I introduced myself all over again.

"I'm working on a case, Miss Watson" I told her. "It involves you. I was hoping we could talk."

"Please, call me MJ," she said as she gestured towards another chair. "What's this case you're working on?"

After I'd settled into the chair, I began explaining. "I can't say who hired me, but they're worried about your safety, and I can assure you that they have your best interests in mind. They're of the opinion that you might be in some kind of trouble. They feel that way because of your recent injuries and the problems you've been having at work. They just want to know if everything is okay."

MJ put what she was reading on a nearby table. Then she gave me a long and close look. She obviously didn't like what she was hearing, but she was still willing to talk.

"Your client has the wrong idea," MJ told me. "I took a fall from a horse and that's how I was hurt. Then my doctor prescribed some pain medication that was too strong for me. It knocked me for a loop that made me miss some shoots. Now that I'm feeling better, shooting starts again tomorrow. You can tell your client that I'm fine."

I nodded. "I'm glad to hear that, and I'll be sure to tell my client. But tell me, have you ever heard of a man named Dennis Carradine?"

After I dropped that particular bombshell, MJ Watson was very still for a moment. But she didn't look at all scared. And I could see something dangerous in her eyes.

My right hand appeared to be idly dangling from the arm-rest of my chair, just above my lap. If I needed to, I could draw my .45 in a split-second. Actually, I was reasonably sure that I was safe. Our conversation was at the point where MJ wanted to know what I knew. And whatever MJ Watson really was, I don't think she want to be too public about it.

"Who is he?" MJ eventually asked.

"In the course of my investigation, his name came up. I think he's the man who killed Benjamin Parker. And I understand you're friends with the Parker family."

"Have you told the police?" MJ asked me reasonably.

I shook my head. "My source isn't the most reliable in the world. And besides, Mr. Carradine is missing."

"Missing?" MJ asked with a raised eyebrow.

"He was the boss of small criminal gang in Jersey City, but his gang was recently thrown out of town. Carradine got separated from the other men in his gang. Nobody knows where he is."

There was a ghost of a smile on MJ's face. "That's interesting, but I'm not sure how I can help you, Domino. I really think the best thing you could do is go to the police."

"I can't do that," I said.

"Why not?"

"Because I've been hired to see to your interests. I don't want to get you - or your friends - in any kind of trouble."

MJ leaned forward, her posture seemingly relaxed. But she was nothing of the sort.

"How would going to the police get me in trouble?"

"You have motive in his disappearance. So do Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker."

MJ gave me a smile that had a definitely predatory element to it. "Is this some kind of shakedown, Domino?"

I shook my head. "I'm not trying to blackmail you. But it would be best if Carradine appeared again - alive and uninjured. If that happened, I could make a case against him for the murder of Ben Parker and hand it over to the New York Police Department. As a murderer, he'd face capital punishment."

For a long moment, MJ stared into my eyes. I did my best to meet her gaze, but that wasn't easy. I knew what was lurking behind those lovely eyes.

"I'll keep what you've said in mind," MJ told me patiently.

That evening, Marie and I met with Duke. Of course, we couldn't tell him all of the truth, but we could give him the more sane-sounding basics. Frankly, I'm not sure if we could have told him the real story. How could he possibly believe us? I was having problem believing it.

"So this Carradine fellow is out of the picture?" Duke asked. Something about the look in his eyes suggested that if Carradine was still a problem, Duke might be inclined settle that himself.

We were sitting in a speak-easy not too far from Wayne's home.

"I don't think he's any kind of threat," I replied.

Duke nodded slowly. "Do you think he's dead?"

Marie and I looked at one another.

"Probably," I told Duke.

"MJ and her friends are in the clear?" That seemed to be what was most important to him. I don't think I'll ever like Duke as much as Marie did, but there were things about him that I could respect.

"Anyone who knows anything isn't inclined to talk about it," I assured him.

Duke nodded and pulled out a checkbook out of his jacket. "What do I owe you?"

I named a number. It wasn't anywhere near what I would have charged Tony Stark.

I wish that was the end of it, but sometimes cases don't end cleanly. Sometimes they sputter and lurch onward - even after the client has paid you off and you're no longer actively involved. And sometimes they continue when you wish they would just go away.

A few weeks later, Marie and I were at Remy's. We were sitting at a small table in the back. Lucy wasn't working that night, so the tattered remains of our respective virtues were safe. Actually, I found myself regretting that. If nothing else, any encounter with Lucy was guaranteed to be memorable.

"Where's Lucy?" I asked the waiter as soon as he delivered our drinks.

"New York," he said absently. "She took a week off to visit a friend."

Marie and I exchanged glances. We both silently wished the unlikely duo of Lucy and Captain Stacy the best.

Then Gwen Stacy walked onto the main stage. We'd somehow missed the fact that she was performing that night.

"Shit," Marie muttered. Then she emptied her drink and waved for another.

Gwen said a few words to the crowd, and then started singing. She was as good as I remembered. Looking around, I finally noticed that MJ and Peter Parker were sitting at one of the tables closer to the main stage. They seemed delighted to see their friend perform.

Marie spotted them too. Then she gave me a questioning look. "Should we get out of here?"

She had a point, but...

"It's never a good idea to give some critters the idea that you're running away," I told her.

Marie thought about that and then nodded.

So we tried to relax as best we could as Gwen worked her way through a series of popular songs.

Eventually, MJ appeared at our table. As MJ sat down, Marie reached under the table, took my hand in hers, and gripped tight.

"How's it going, Domino?" MJ asked. As she spoke, her eyes casually wandered over Marie. Judging from the look on her face, MJ liked what she was seeing.

"I'm fine," I said a little stiffly. "How are things with you, MJ? I hear your career is back on track."

"Yeah, that sorted itself out. So... about that Carradine thing. I want to tell you something."

"What?" I asked.

"Carradine isn't going to reappear. I thought you should know, just in case you were still worried about it."

I took a moment to empty my shot glass. The whiskey burned its way down my throat.

"Too bad," I replied blandly.

MJ shrugged. "Not really. He was a creep and he hurt a lot of people who mean something to me."

I found myself nodding in agreement. I can't say I cared the slightest about Carradine. In my time, I've also circumvented the legal system in order to get what some would call justice, but others would call vengeance. In fact, I've killed a lot more than one man for that reason.

So I had no urge to pronounce judgement on MJ and her friends. Back when I suggested they let Carradine go, I was just trying to find a path for them that would put them in the least danger. After all, that was in the interests of our client.

"I don't suppose you'd be willing tell me the name of your client?" MJ asked.

Marie and I shook our heads.

MJ shrugged. "Okay, I know that's a matter of professionalism, so I won't press the point."

Up on stage, Gwen finished a slow song about lost love and switched to something more... playful.

"Itsy bitsy spider, went up the water spout..."

The audience chuckled in amusement. I glanced towards Gwen. She was looking right at us. At the table below her, Parker was also looking in our direction. Light was glinting from his glasses and concealing his eyes. The reason for this encounter was obvious. We were being warned to stay away.

As if we needed the warning.

"We spotted you at that hotel in Lee's Crossing," MJ said idly. One of her red-tipped fingers was tracing a wet ring on the surface of our table. "You saw us. Maybe it would be best if you forgot what you saw."

Marie let out a sharp bark of laughter. "Sugar, I pray to God every night that I'll forget what I saw."

That made MJ hesitate.

"Tiger, I've done some praying of my own," she eventually told Marie. "It hasn't worked yet."

Then MJ got to her feet and turned away. She was obviously done with us.

"What happened to Carradine?" Marie asked suddenly.

MJ looked over her shoulder at me, an amused look on her face. Then she said something I'll spend the rest of my life trying to pretend I never heard.

"Gwen and I laid our eggs in him," MJ told us.

Then she walked away.