Blackjack Villain (The Blackjack Series) Read online

  I was destitute, no degree, no prospects save shady ones, and to tell the truth, the whole situation pissed me off.

  One night, soon after the bank robbery debacle, I was at some dive near my East Hollywood apartment. I was drinking some Jack Daniels when this guy walked into the bar, opened up a splitting fat wallet and dropped a hundred on the bar for a few drinks for him and his date. I sat there watching him out of the corner of my eye, watching that fat wallet almost bursting out of his back pocket.

  He was in his early-30s, way out of shape, wearing a suit pant two sizes too small. His watch was an Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean worth at least three grand and his girl was decked out in gold and pearls. He was about my age and had everything I didn’t have; the sweet life I lacked.

  I was tempted to reach across the bar, right there in front of everyone, and shake the shit out of the guy. To take his stuff, his girl and ride off in whatever fancy car he had parked outside.

  But it wasn’t that simple.

  Committing a crime wasn’t that easy, especially since I had never really done it. My previous criminal act hadn’t been premeditated, a foolish decision made in a moment of weakness. Hell, I’d gone out with the idea of becoming a hero, so this was really the first real consideration I was giving the whole idea of going the other way. It was funny, I had the strength to bench press the bar and everyone in it, but I couldn’t manage the courage to do this one thing. I figured to leave before temptation got the best of me, and decided to hit the bathroom and roll out the backdoor.

  But wouldn’t you know it, I was halfway done when the whale walked into the bathroom, gave me a “heya” nod and slipped into the bathroom’s only stall. I didn’t realize it, but I must’ve walked over to the door and stood there long enough to make him nervous.

  “Can I help you?” he yelped from inside and repeated it again before it even registered.

  I thought about tearing the door down and ripping off all his stuff. I mean, he must’ve had a few grand in that wallet. The watch alone would pay the rent for six months. I could’ve taken everything and slipped out the back door without anyone knowing anything. By the time they found him, I’d be clear across town.

  It should’ve been easy for me. I mean, I had taken four bags of money from a bunch of assault weapon-armed bank robbers and dropped a hero to boot. What harm was there in jacking some kid a few thousand dollars? With that money, and the money from the bank, I could afford parts, equipment, maybe even a half-assed lab. Anything to get me on my feet again.

  But something held me back. Maybe it was the same thing that had kept me from opening the bags of money that now lay hidden in my apartment. At first, I was afraid to touch them, in fear they might have dye pack. After a while, they represented something that was so easy, so available, and so frightening.

  Standing in front of that stall I pondered all the alternatives and possibilities, but they all ended with me in jail.

  Finally the guy opened the door with a mixture of fear and anger across his face.

  “What is your problem?” he snapped.

  I think I smiled because he got real worried.

  “You two fags?” a third voice interrupted, before I was even able to respond, and we both turned to see a newcomer by the bathroom door. He was dressed in black leather jacket and pants, with biker boots and a dark mask concealing his face. The black leather was trimmed with orange flames and his eyes glowed with fire.

  The rich guy nervously eyed me and the newcomer, taking a half-step back into the stall.

  “Who are you?” he managed.

  “I’m Fireblaster,” the new guy said proudly. “Give me all your shit and no one gets hurt,” he added, stretching his arms out and engaging a fire aura that encompassed him.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” the rich guy said.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I said, taking a step closer to Fireblaster.

  “Easy big guy,” the fire man said, raising his right hand at me and focusing the flames around his fist. “I don’t want to have to-” he managed, but I was on him before he could finish. I grabbed the wrist of his extended hand, pulling him towards me, and threw a savage elbow that caught him in the face. The flame aura fizzled out and he fell to the floor, unconscious.

  “Whoa!” the rich guy said, recoiling back into the stall fearing I would hit him next. But in the silence that followed, he regained his composure and stepped out.

  “That was awesome!” he proclaimed, slapping me on the shoulder. “You’re like a hero or something, am I right? You put him down in like...” he walked over to the unconscious Fireblaster. “I think you broke this dude’s face!”

  “Give me your wallet,” I said, grabbing the rich guy’s jacket and pinning him against the wall, “The car keys, and the watch.”

  His bravado faded into surprise then finally morphed into resignation as he handed me his wallet. I flipped it open and saw the layers upon layers of hundred dollar bills, folded neatly inside, and couldn’t help but smile as the guy handed me his watch.

  “I thought you were one of the good guys,” the guy managed nervously.

  Another step on the path to becoming a criminal.

  * * *

  Starting out proved harder than I thought. I flipped the rich kid’s Jaguar for $3,000 at the Los Angeles docks, and I had another $4,500 from his wallet (the watch I kept), but even combined with the money from the bank robbery, I had barely enough to get off the ground. I blew the whole load buying the essentials; gear to upgrade the super suit, equipment for a lab to manufacture my gadgets and special arrowheads, and most importantly, materials to manufacture a hand-made English longbow (no more off-the-rack crap for me). I needed more cash, and the only thing left for me was to rob a bank, or hit an armored car.

  Despite planning it for weeks, my first try at robbing an armored car was an unmitigated disaster, almost as bad as the bank robbery gone awry. If I was going to be serious about this, I was going to need all the help I could get, advice from guys who had done it before.

  And I needed a super name.

  Figuring out a good name is not as easy as it might seem. In the fifty-plus years since the first supers (dubbed The Seven) appeared, there’ve been thousands of heroes and villains, and most names are long taken. Some guys even hand them down from the original to their protégés or descendants. For some reason, none of the names that came to mind inspired me. I guess I don’t have that artistic flair, so I started hanging around places where supers might gather, trying to find inspiration in bars and dance clubs where they could come together without the bother of press snapping indiscrete pictures or normals asking for autographs. For bad guys those places were better concealed, harder to find. I had heard of a small quiet haven on La Cienega. Good supers knew where they were, but left them alone, there were plenty of opportunities to break bones when we were committing crimes.

  This place was called Solace, and was down a flight of steps in the back of a building on a dank and dirty alleyway. It was a perfect place to have a drink and be left alone. A stank smell of beer and cigarette assaulted your senses, when you opened the door as the contrast with the light outside made your eyes quickly adjust to the dark of the place. As I came inside, the heavy steel door slammed shut so loud and powerfully, that the beat-up old jukebox bounced, skipping the song that played (Skynyrd’s “Simple Man”). The roof was low, draped with old canvas to conceal the ductwork and forcing me to hunch down as I moved through the sparsely populated wooden tables to the bar which lay on the far side of the room.

  A pair of guys sat in one of the circular booths that ran along the right wall, orange lit by dangling ceiling lights. One of them was watching me closely as his companion gesticulated mid-conversation.

  A woman sat at the bar watching me approach. She was a pale and fragile thing in her mid-fifties, wearing too much makeup around her eyes and a color of hair dye too dark for her pale skin. Her bust was surgically amplified and around her hair buzzed tendri
ls of smoke wafting from her cigarette. She gave me a good looking over as I found a seat a few places from her.

  The barkeep came over and leaned on the bar with both arms splayed wide. He was a guy in his mid-twenties dressed like a frat boy, with a dark blue shirt splayed with Greek letters, and a University of Michigan cap.

  “Sup,” he said.

  I looked at the rows of alcohol bottles along the wall behind him and found my old reliable, Jack Daniels.

  “Shot of Jack and a chaser,” I told him motioning to the bottle. “Whatever’s on tap is fine.”

  I felt a pat on my shoulder and suddenly there was a guy in my face, “Hey buddy,” he said, leaning forward and invading my personal space. He was inebriated, but reeked of something else, a combination of Aqua Velva, mint cigarettes and urine. At first look, he gave the impression that the circus was in town. He had wild blonde hair, somewhere between short and medium length depending on what part of his head you were looking at. His eyes were insane, tired and manic at the same time, one with a lazy eyelid that only quivered when he blinked. He was clothed as if by his blind mother, though the man was clearly in his sixties. He wore a terra-cotta jacket and pants, the slacks tucked into his black socks, revealing dangly thin legs supported by a pair of Converse sneakers with the laces run amuck. He also wore a brick-red vest, too small for his bulging beer-belly, so as to almost disappear under his jacket, and a black buttoned down shirt that hung over of his waistband. Jutting from his coat pocket, turned outwards for all to see was a dog-eared copy of Adult Video News (Asia) that threatened to fall out as he flailed wildly to his companion sitting in a booth against the far wall.

  “Holy shit, it’s the...” he said, struggling with the right word, and turned back to his friend in the booth. “It’s him. Delphi, this is the guy!”

  “Listen ‘buddy’, I don’t-” I managed but he wouldn’t stop pestering me.

  “Fucking A,” he started again then paused. “You know what? I met you back like...”

  His friend, the “Delphi” he had referred to, walked over. He was a tall, athletic fellow with a swimmer’s build and a ruffle of curly brown-reddish hair.

  “...no. I’m fucked up. That’s Batlash. I’m fucked up,” the crazy guy continued, then laughed manically and slapped my arm, a lot harder than I had expected, or was proper.

  He straightened suddenly, his friend almost to us, and got serious; “I am a big fan. Huge. I’m not shitting you.”

  Delphi’s most defining feature was his predatory eyes, which he tried to conceal behind a faint, pleasant smile. They were the eyes of a jaguar, lying in ambush, moments before the kill. He had a face you forgot a moment after you looked at it, with a long powerful nose, and his hair was scruffy enough pass for a careless attitude. But the pressed and tailored purple shirt and immaculate tan slacks defined him as meticulous to a fault.

  His eyes were never off me as he approached the bar.

  The barkeep tossed my shot and beer on the bar, “that’ll be nine dollars.”

  “Oh, hell no,” the crazy guy said, digging into his pockets, and coming up with a thick wad of crushed bills, an uncapped sharpie pen, about five dollars in change, and a handful of lint. “I got this man. No way in hell my friend’s paying for his drinks.”

  Change and lint spilled to the floor, as did his pornographic magazine, but he made no effort to pick it up.

  “What are you doing, Razor?” Delphi asked. His voice was deep, soothing and very creepy.

  “It’s him,” the crazy guy continued. “This is Crashdown. I’d know him anywhere!”

  Crashdown was a well-known super villain; a dude in a suit. He obviously had me confused. I was much taller and Crashdown had never been unmasked. How he believed that was me, I had no clue.

  Delphi smiled, shrugging as if apologizing for Razor.

  “Razor,” he said. “This isn’t Crashdown.”

  Razor shook his head. “Oh, no. I read about it. The guy’s in town. This is him!” Again he got serious. “This is a real treat for me, you know? I was once-”

  “I’m not Crashdown,” I tried to interrupt but he continued.

  “-in a bar in...shit, I can’t remember. Thailand or something. And they were putting your video. You know, the one where you fought Lord Mighty...Say what?”

  “This isn’t Crashdown.”

  “You’re not,” Razor muttered, not disappointed, but more confused than anything.

  “No, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Well, shit. I’ll buy your drink anyway,” he said enthusiastically after a ten second pause mulling it over, and tossed some of his sweaty money on the bar. “Get me and Delphi one too, so we can drink with our new friend.”

  “This fellow probably wants some peace and quiet,” Delphi said. “Let’s let him have a drink and-”

  “Oh, hell no. I’m not going to let my new friend here drink alone. On a night like tonight?”

  I was thinking how it wasn’t night outside, and, in fact, it was a beautiful Southern California day, when Razor shoved his right hand into mine, and clasped it tight with his left.

  “Razor, Black Razor. I’ve also gone by Razorman. It’s a pleasure,” he announced.

  “I’m Dale,” I managed, finally recognizing him from the “Black Razor” pseudonym. He was a pretty known villain during the late eighties and nineties, though I couldn’t place his power set.

  His face changed.

  “You’re a tourist?”

  “Razor,” Delphi pleaded.

  “Huh?”

  Razor’s face grew stern, with his jaw muscles clenched. “You a fucking tourist or something?”

  “Raze, man. Chill out with this guy!” The bartender asked, watching the whole scene unfold from behind me.

  “No,” he said jabbing his finger at the bartender, then at my chest. “Fuck this guy. You want a picture with the supers or something? Huh? This guy’s a fucking tourist!”

  I shook my head, trying to speak but he was on a roll and growing more impatient and hostile by the second. Delphi muscled in and came between us as it seemed like Razor was about to take a swing.

  “Sorry about my friend,” he apologized, but Razor wouldn’t be upstaged.

  “This guy’s a fame whore or something. You want to take a picture with some local villains or something, buddy? You want to be famous?”

  “I’m not a glory hound,” I snapped, looking around the bar. Despite the dim lighting, I could feel everyone’s eyes boring at me. “I’m new to the game.”

  But Razor wasn’t hearing it. “I bet this guy’s got a sexual fetish about us or something. Likes the feel of spandex on his balls.”

  “You’re new?” Delphi asked and I nodded. “So that’s why you don’t have a super name,” he said, continuing down line of thought for Razor’s sake. “See? He’s alright. He doesn’t have a super name yet.”

  “Uh, what? What’d he say?”

  “Dale’s new to the game,” Delphi said, impressing me by remembering both my name during what almost threatened to be a full-out scrum, and by managing to soothe Razor’s maniacal ramblings.

  “He’s new?” Razor repeated, already calming down.

  I nodded, and he took a step back, brushing his wild hair back, though the gesture only ruffled it further.

  “Well shit,” he announced, flashing the big toothy smile again and he rushed to shake my hand with the same clasping motion as before. “Nice to meet you, man. I’m Razor, and this here’s Delphi.”

  * * *

  I don’t know how I ended up sitting with them, but I’ll admit I was curious about these guys, Delphi in particular. It wasn’t how intense and serious he was; the guy looked like he was prosperous. Unlike Razor whose similarities to a clown were overwhelming, Delphi’s clothes were recent and clean. He looked like a successful villain, and I could use all he help I could get.

  Besides, Razor was in a buying mood.

  Soon we were joined by a fourth, a lovely woman they
introduced to me as Serpentis. She was a short, waifish thing in her mid-thirties, with a pristine, doll-like face that made her appear still in her teens. Serpentis wore ragged jeans, a red, white and black plaid shirt with a black scarf, jacket, a reversed painter’s cap and dark shades too big for the size of her head. All in all, what you’d expect her to have been wearing ten years ago in her college days.

  She slipped into the booth beside Delphi, plopping a kiss in his cheek and flashing Razor a friendly wink. From how close she sat to him, you could tell there was more than friendship there, but I didn’t bother to ask.

  “So who’s this?” she said, not really looking at me so much as tapping away at her Blackberry.

  “This is Dale,” Delphi announced, sweeping his hands towards me. “He’s new in the business. This is the infamous Serpentis. I’m sure you’ve heard of her.”

  I had, and she smiled, beaming at Delphi’s grand introduction but her attention soon returned to her PDA.

  “Anyway, we’re trying to help him find a good super name.”

  “Yeah, man. I can’t believe you don’t have one. It’s like running naked in the rain,” Razor said. He had a way of talking that it seemed as if he was almost breathless. “You know,” he continued when he saw I had no idea what he meant. “Cold water makes your prick small.”