by TheTimeTrust
The Fish Factory, La Perdita:
Grissom Montag shook his head and sighed. He'd just heard the whole sad story as told by Kit Piper of the gambling debts he'd incurred with a Mafioso named Gambini, and of the ensuing kidnapping of his two young daughters and his ex-wife, as well as of Kit's embezzlement of both MBL Consulting's and the Hero Revolution Fund's money. So much for all the grand plans the team had -- from what Kit told him, the team was broke. And not only that, it was in debt for a quarter of a million dollars with all the bills they'd racked up since the hurricane and the ambitious rebuilding projects. What were they going to do now?
"H-help me, Griss!" Kit Piper shouted at the Englishman, pulling at his shirt in desperation. "You gotta help me get my daughters back somehow!" He broke away, unable to speak any longer. Grissom looked away, unable to see a grown man cry like this.
"Look, mate, you don't need me t' tell you that you're in a heap of trouble -- I'm sure you're well aware o' that fact -- but from what you've told me, it may be difficult to track down your daughters and save both of them. As you were told, if one is saved and the other isn't saved at the same time, the one still in captivity will be killed. To start with, we don't even know where they are."
"There's gotta be a way," Kit said. "There's gotta be a way..." He closed his eyes as he started to bawl again, but then he suddenly stopped. "Hey, waitasec," he said, opening his eyes again, and looking around quickly as if in thought. "Yeah... yeah... I think I know a way..."
"What is it, old man?"
"Lemme find those papers," Kit said, frantically searching around his cluttered desk. "Dammit, where are they?"
"Tell me, Kit! What are you thinking?"
"Remember the meeting this morning? When I told the team about the control of BountyLand Foods reverting to its previous ownership?"
"Well... yeah -- sort of."
"That Mr. Vandemar guy said something about our team being under surveillance for a few months."
"Oh?" Grissom said, an eyebrow raising in sudden interest.
"Yeah, it was before you started setting up those nifty new security measures."
"Right, right," Grissom replied, grinning. "So did he give any names?"
"Gah! Can't remember. Something that started with G -- sort of like your name, but different."
Grissom was quiet for a moment as his mind turned over. He looked at Kit and said seriously, "It wasn't Griffin, was it?"
"Yeah! That's right! How'd you guess?"
Grissom sighed deeply. "If there's anyone qualified for this kind of work without getting noticed, it's Griffin."
"You know him?"
"Sort of. We had an... incident... a while back. Bastard left me in quite a predicament a few years ago. But yeah, I see where you're going with this, Kit. He's a professional. Well qualified for this kind of job. But he's expensive... very, very expensive."
"Dammit."
"Well... I guess I could lend you the capital..."
"Really?" Kit said, his eyes lighting up.
"...after all, these are your daughters we're talking about. And I have been looking forward to seeing Griffin again..." He smiled a wicked smile as his knuckles went white.
"If I can get ahold of this Vandemar guy, I might be able to get in contact with him or something. Maybe we could hire him to find out where my daughters are being kept, so we can get them out at the same time."
"Maybe... maybe. But I wouldn't trust him to do the actual rescue. Trust me, mate -- he's not really anyone you'd want around children..."
The French-owned Caribbean island of Martinique, a few miles away from La Perdita in the chain of islands known as the Lesser Antilles:
A fat lump of flesh that had once been a living, breathing man lay motionless in a chair behind a desk in a locked room. The man had received many death threats over the past few months and had taken them very seriously. His advisers had told him to get out of the country, go on vacation for a while, perhaps on a Caribbean island. To that end, the man had gone to this Caribbean island and found a hotel with a well-guarded room, one kept only for VIPs. There were bars on his window and guards posted outside his room and even next to the windows outside. They had told him that no one could enter this room without their knowing it. They had told him that he was safe.
Now he was dead.
Griffin loved these kinds of jobs. He almost felt sorry for the detective who would be assigned to this case. It was a locked-room mystery -- his speciality -- which the detective would have to figure out an explanation for. Metahumans were rare -- extremely rare -- and no respectable police detective would use metahuman as the reason for what seemed an impossible crime -- that would be a so-called cop-out. No, the detective would probably take the easy route and rule the death a suicide.
Even though the knife was in his back. Even though the man was physically unable to reach his arms behind his back to stab himself there. Even though the man's throat had been slit after he had been stabbed in the back.
Murder was an art. And Griffin was an auteur.
A buzzing sound came to Griffin's eldil stone, an artifact that he had figured out a way to use as a pager. It was only one thing: someone had contacted him by e-mail for another job. As much as he would like to stay and savor his current job as long as possible before someone realized that the man hadn't left his room for quite some time or even called room service for his next frequent meal, he would have to get back to his own hotel room and check his e-mail.
Perhaps it would be another interesting job. Griffin loved his work.
The home of Dr. Henry Quantos, North Vancouver, British Columbia:
Quantos pressed the end button on his cell-phone and breathed a sigh of relief. Well, at least Kit wasn't dead or anything -- Quantos often feared that the EPS would catch up to the guys eventually and hit them at the time when they were weakest -- but things were not all well.
Kit had confessed to Grissom and Quantos about embezzling all that money from the company as well as the team's own private fund, something Kit never should have had access to in the first place. Kit had been put in a position he never should have been in in the first place, either. Especially not with so much money involved. Sure, Kit had managed to get a few juicy jobs for the team, but he should NEVER have been made president. He was under-qualified for the position, and it had become obvious that it had gone to his head.
His gambling weakness was one that Quantos had known about, not to mention Kit's criminal record from when he was a young man, but he seemed to be able to manage things. And since it had been Pete Glover's money, after all, Quantos had left the decision to Pete. Of course, before his death, Pete had been little more than a vagrant with a bit of dumb luck who had come into money through gambling himself. How could he possibly make a decision that affected the team as much as it did?
If it had really been necessary, Quantos thought to himself, he would have stepped in to replace Kit if he had proven to be a bad choice as president, except Quantos wasn't qualified to run a business. He was a scientist, a theoretician and researcher at best (albeit with a bit of applied science and engineering experience), as well as a doctor. Business training was not in his resume. When he'd been the head of research at Malvan-X Corporation, he had left the details of business to the board of directors and kept them up to date with a weekly report on his department. He was even less qualified than Kit to run MBL Consulting.
Grissom had told Quantos not to worry about why Kit had stolen the large amount of money, but that he would take care of it if Quantos would start working on the financial problems the team was in. But where was he going to start? He was the team's scientific adviser and sometime-doctor, and in this he felt way over his head. He had a vague idea about somehow attracting investors to the company in order to get it out of debt enough so it wouldn't have to declare bankruptcy, but where would he begin? He didn't know any millionaires around here.
The doorbell rang just then.
"What is it now?" he muttered to himself, walking over to the door, where Mandelovia was wagging her tail. "Down, girl, down. You'll get your W-A-L-K later."
He opened the door and smiled broadly at the person standing on his doorstep. "Well, hello there!" he said, opening his door more widely. And all his troubles suddenly seemed to fade away as he saw the face of his guest.
The Fish Factory, La Perdita:
Kit sat at his desk nervously. Grissom stood and looked at his watch again.
"How long do you figure he'll be here, again?" Kit asked.
"Not long," Grissom answered. "He's very punctual. If he says he's going to be here at a certain time, he's here at a certain time."
"Isn't it a bit late in the day for him?"
"Nah. Griffin's a zombie -- sleeps strange hours, and never at the same time each day. Says he doesn't like to be too predictable. If you're too predictable, if you get yourself into a daily routine, it's much easier for someone to find you. And if it's easier for someone to find you, it's easier for someone to kill you. Like that chap who rode his motorcycle to work each day on the same lonely stretch of road in the countryside. One day someone placed a string of piano wire across that road at neck level. That day, on his way to work, he ran right through it. Clipped his head right off. That's what predictability gets you. Well, at least that's Griffin's philosophy as he explains it."
"Man..." Kit breathed, his eyes widening, "...where'd you meet this guy?"
"Uhh... That takes some explaining, Kit," Grissom said, scratching the back of his head. "Can you keep a secret?"
"Hell, man, I owe you that much at least, especially for agreeing to keep the secret of my daughters being kidnapped from everyone else until this business is over with. And your secret can't possibly be any worse than what I've done to the company."
"Well, old man, t'tell you the truth, I haven't always been a security consultant. Back in my wild days, I used to work as a mercenary. Gun-for-hire. And with my abilities, it made me a lot of money. Enough to start up my own business a few years later. Back then, I took a lot of messy assignments, some of which required me to do a bit of damage. Y'understand?"
"Sure," Kit said. "I grew up on the streets, man. Did some stuff in my own youth I'm not proud of. Lost my kid brother that way, in fact. But that's another story. So how'd you hook up with Griffin? From what you've said of him, he doesn't really seem like much of a nice guy. Not like you."
Grissom laughed. "Griffin's not without his charm. Just so long as you never forget that the charming persona which he shows everyone covers up a completely ruthless, psychotic personality that will murder without a single thought if it served his interests at the time. I'm no angel m'self, but I'd like to think I have a line I won't cross. Anyways, it was during a job in the Middle East that I crossed paths with Griffin. We worked together so long as it served both our best interests, but he left me in the lurch when he no longer needed my help. O' course, I somehow managed to get myself out of there fine, as y' can see, but it was quite a predicament. At the time, I swore if I ever saw 'im again, I'd kill 'im."
"Wow. So what now? Are you gonna kill him?"
Grissom was silent for a moment. Then he grinned devilishly and said, "I haven't decided yet..."
The home of Dr. Henry Quantos, North Vancouver, British Columbia:
"Here's your cup of tea. Green tea, right? I remembered."
"Yes. Thank you, Henry."
"I love tea. It's a lot easier on the stomach. I gave myself an ulcer a few years ago from drinking too much coffee while under stress, so I switched to tea. Haven't had those problems since."
"You always took things to heart too much, Henry. That's what I remember about you."
"I still do. And there's this thing with this company I'm working for now, too. It's a real mess. I'm not sure what to do about it."
"Oh?"
"Yes. We started it up almost a year ago now, with the help of this guy named Kit Piper. Real used-car-salesman type, you understand. Well, anyway, he's been useful for getting a good customer base going, but his leadership of the actual company has been a complete disaster. He relied too much on a business owned by the late Mr. Glover to keep the company financed, but we've recently lost control of that business."
"Ah, I'm beginning to see..."
"Yes, and of course, now that the funds have dried up, all these bills are piling up. Bills that we have no hope in hell of ever paying, not at the rate we're going now. Anyway, Mr. Piper has proven himself to be completely unfit to run this company, and even if he were qualified to do so, we still need a heck of a lot of investment capital to get us back on our feet again."
"I know you too well, Henry. You're like an open book. You're asking me to invest, aren't you?"
"Well... yeah... kinda..."
"Hmmm... Well, I must say it would be a challenge. And you know I love challenges. And I also haven't been up to much of anything recently. Traveling has begun to bore me so."
"So... can you help us out?"
"I will..."
"Great!"
"...on two conditions only."
"I'm listening..."
The Fish Factory, La Perdita:
"Hello."
Kit jumped up, startled at the voice. "GAH!"
Grissom smiled as he heard the disembodied voice next to him. "Griffin."
Slowly, a tall trench coat and hat materialized, one with no visible head. "Grissom -- it's been a long time, you old rascal." The sleeve of the trench coat reached up, and a gloved hand stretched out.
"It has," Grissom said, shaking the gloved hand in greeting. As soon as he released his hand, he swung his balled fist directly into the space between the top of the trench coat and the bottom of the hat, striking something definitely solid.
The trench coat fell back as the hat toppled away. "A-heh."
"You have no idea how long I've been waiting to do that."
"A-heh. I guess I deserved that one, old chap," the voice said as the trench coat pushed itself back off the floor and placed the hat back over it. "But that's the only one I'll allow."
"Agreed."
"It has been a while though, hasn't it? Ah, but enough about old times. You have a job for me, I suppose? I'm assuming you can afford my rate?"
"That's not a problem."
"For you, old man, I'll charge you seventy-five percent of my usual commission. Now tell me -- who do you want me to kill?"
And if Griffin's face could have become visible at that moment, Kit and Grissom would not have been surprised to see a grin upon his face.
North Vancouver, British Columbia:
Barbara Townsend heard the doorbell ring. "No, Ladybird!" she whispered. "No barking!" Who could it be at this late hour? she thought to herself as she put on her robe and crept to the front door. She looked through the peephole and recognized the face.
"Henry?" she said, puzzled as she opened the door. "What's wrong, dear? It's late."
"Barbara, I'm sorry, honey, but I'm going to have to ask you to look after Mandy again," Henry Quantos said as his dog Mandelovia pushed through the open door and began wagging her tail at Ladybird.
"Oh, Henry," Barbara said, "not another business trip?"
"It's very important, honey. The guys need my help again."
Barbara looked over his shoulder at the taxicab at the curb. "Henry? Is that man waiting for you? Who is he?" The man was dressed in a black trench coat and wore a dark hat and sunglasses, even though it was dark outside.
Henry looked back and laughed. "Oh, him? That's... that's Victor Xiang, an old colleague of mine who's interested in investing in my company. I'm going to, uh... give him a personal tour of the facilities."
"I see," she replied. "Well, how long will you be gone this time?"
"Hopefully just a few days this time, hon. Don't want to miss that concert at the Orpheum next week, do we?" he said, winking at her.
"Come back to me, sweetheart," Barbara said as she hugged him.
"I will," Henry said, and he kissed her. He waved as he walked back to the taxicab.
On the ride to the airport, Xiang said to him, "True love, Henry? I never thought you had it in you."
"There's a lot more to me than you might know," he replied with a grin. "Anyone currently in your life?"
"No, no," said Xiang. "You know me, Henry. I've never been one to settle down. I did love someone once, but that ship has long ago sailed, I'm afraid."