"No, I'm not planning anything, thank you," she sighed with a touch of impatience. "And if I was, I wouldn't tell it to the Revolution. They'd get a nice little note, in the mail." She smiled impishly and changed the subject. "Has anyone heard from Paul or Jim lately?"
    "I wouldn't go on the Paul thing, that's a sore subject with these guys," Larry nodded at us.
    "No, we're over it," I assured them.
    "I don't think it's Paul that's behind our current problems, from what I could see he wasn't really up to this scale," Scott told them. "Not several battalions of tanks and plastic soldiers fighting a giant Godzilla."
    "I have to admit, that's impressive though," Larry mused.
    "It's not quite lobbing a mall at somebody, but other than that...."
    "Didn't he do that once?"
    "He claimed to," Felix put in.
    "Why do you ask about them?" Larry asked.
    "I got a letter from Jim a couple days ago," Molly replied.
    Pause. "Really. How's he doing?" he asked casually.
    "Fine, says he's fine." She glanced at us. "It's all right for me to discuss this in front of you, you're not going to fly down to Mexico in order to catch him, are you?"
    "I think they'd have to extradite him, actually," I said uncertainly.
    "They wouldn't want to do that, that's all messy and legal and stuff."
    "And I'm sure he's perfectly capable of bribing the correct officials to keep it from happening in the first place. I don't have any hard feelings about the butterfly thing," I shrugged. I hope he wouldn't be offended, but the Lepidopterist does not rate on my personal enemies list.
    "Oh, good. He's up in the highlands categorizing some species of moth that he found up there. Keeping himself busy in his retirement. He's planning to visit before the end of the year."
    Now that might be a problem, but I held my peace.
    "I'm actually kind of worried about Paul," said Scott, whose mind as usual had been working away on a problem entirely apart from the current discussion.
    "Why?" Larry asked.
    "Somebody else with exactly the same power? Not exactly a common one, or one you'd think would breed true."
    "We were discussing this with Phoenix last month when he came by to talk to us about it. We did some research. He doesn't have any children, it's not a common power, and as we pointed out, if there was anything Paul was good at it was setting up secret bases, which jibes with the gauntlet that he ran Phoenix Talon through with the whole GI Joe thing. A lot of this does smack of Paul's MO, just...." He shrugged. "He was dying of neurological cancer. Molly, you have anything to add here?"
    "Jim did mention in the letter, apparently the two of them, after the gig, split up."
    "That's standard operating procedure."
    "So we have no idea what he did with his half of the money," Felix concluded.
    "No clue," she shrugged.
    "Well, I hate to sound overly dramatic, but I think that Scott might be right, here," Larry pronounced. "Whoever this new Toy Man is, we probably owe it to Paul to look into it. You wouldn't mind if we poked around a little, unofficially?"
    "He's your boss," I shrugged.
    "But you are the duly licensed law enforcement authorities in dealing with the Toy Man scenario."
    True. I paused for thought. "If you think you have an idea...."
    "No, unfortunately, I don't."
    "Well, if you have one, don't get too close to it. I don't know how stable this guy is. He hasn't hurt anybody yet, which is a good sign, but...."
    "That's another indication that it might very well be Paul."
    "We almost lost a helicopter crew with the Godzilla thing," I pointed out.
    "But you saved them, didn't you?"
    "Well, yes."
    "I saw the footage, you were nearby, not actively doing anything else. They were in no danger, not within the confines of the Game."
    I forbore arguing the point—easy for them to talk when they hadn't been anywhere near that atomic breath— and Scott dropped a ten-ton weight into the conversation. "Digging up dead bodies to make immortality potions?"
    There was a long moment of quiet.
    "You're suggesting that...." Larry's brows rose sharply.
    "It's a possibility."
    "Scott, sometimes I hate the way you think. So you're the one who does all the crosswords before I can get to them," I muttered admiringly.
    "Sorry."
    "That is an interesting idea, I must say."
    "Certainly bears looking into," Larry agreed.
    "The two problems did crop up around the same time." I tried to think back.
    "It would explain among other things why he suddenly decided to come out of retirement," Scott pointed out.
    "And in quite an impressive fashion," I agreed.
    "Worth looking into. You want us to get on this right away, boss?"
    "That'd probably be a good idea."
    "Well, first we have to finish taking the rest of Stevie's money, right?" Larry smiled and clasped his hands together briskly.
    "I haven't lost anything yet tonight," the old sidekick protested cheerily. "Paul, can you hand me another beer?"
    I stuck to iced tea, as usual, and the conversation wandered off to less esoteric avenues. Also as usual, I was going to be coming out of the evening worse off than I went in. Price of admission, I guess.
    "So apparently they're issuing new gangs in Boston a copy of Shakespeare," Scott said.
    "This the Alley Cats thing?" Larry asked.
    "The Alley Cats?" Felix echoed.
    "Apparently they're led by Tybalt," his old friend explained.
    "Well, we all know what happened to him...." I shrugged.
    There was a marked absence of reaction from the Sphinx on this feline topic.
    "Well, this is all terribly interesting," Molly announced, "but I'm afraid it's getting late, and my chauffeur's going to be around in a few minutes. Does anyone need a ride home?"
    "Could you pour Stevie into your car?" Larry suggested.
    "Steve, come along." She clapped her hands. "Wake up, wake up!"
    "Uh... mom?"
    "No. Thankfully."
    "Where's your car?" Scott asked her.
    "S'around back," Stevie mumbled.
    "Not your car."

| Top |