The Brave and the Bold: Jade and Red Arrow

Star Search

by HarveyKent

Part One

As he walked up the front steps of Maggie’s apartment building, Roy Harper again tugged at the bow tie imprisoning his neck. He hated tuxedos, hated formal situations. He felt more relaxed when super-criminals were trying to kill him than he did in a roomful of men in tuxedos and women in evening gowns. But he resolved himself to enjoy the evening.

“Come on in,” Maggie’s voice called, after he rang the bell of her apartment. “I’m just about ready!”

“OK,” Roy called, opening the door. Maggie’s apartment was tastefully furnished, with a couple of movie posters behind glass frames on the walls. Roy especially liked the Wizard of Oz poster; he had been eight when that film first came out, but as he spent that year stranded atop a deserted mesa, he had missed it.

“What do you think?” Maggie asked, stepping out of the bathroom. The attractive Asian girl was wearing a short-hemmed, low-cut black strapless dress. She did a slow pirouette to show Roy all sides of it; the dress was practically backless. Her golden skin shimmered in the flourescent light.

Roy whistled. “I think you’d better be careful; you might get a traffic ticket.”

Maggie’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “Traffic ticket? What for?”

“Turning on Red Arrow,” Roy joked. Maggie laughed with him, sharing the private joke of their confidence. Roy was still new to the idea of someone outside “the business” knowing about his double life, but it felt damn good.

“So, you like it, huh?” Maggie asked, when she stopped laughing. “I’m glad; you don’t want to know how much this thing cost! But it was worth it.”

“I’ll say,” Roy said. Then, in a deeper voice: “That’s a honey of an anklet you’re wearing.”

Maggie looked down at her feet in confusion; she was wearing no anklet. Then she looked back up at Roy, a knowing smile on her face.

“Fred MacMurray to Barbara Stanwyck, Double Indemnity, Paramount, 1943,” she said. Roy and Maggie, both ardent fans of classic cinema, loved this game they played.

“’44,” Roy corrected.

“Are you sure?” Maggie asked.

“Pretty sure,” Roy said, remembering back to that sunny October Saturday in 1944 when he had seen the movie. He and Sylvester had escorted two teenage girls, daughters of a bridge partner of Syl’s mother. What was the name of his date? Lisa, or Laura, or something like that? Roy reflected on how old she must be by now. Old enough to be Maggie’s mother, in fact. Possibly even her grandmother.

“Let’s get going,” Roy said, pushing such thoughts out of his mind. “We don’t want to be late.”

Part Two

“Hope you don’t mind that I didn’t rent a limo,” Roy said, holding the door of his Ford Taurus open for Maggie. Thanks to his inheritance, he could have purchased outright a fleet of limousines, but he found them pretentious. His Taurus got him from Point A to Point B as well as any limo, he would be quick to point out.

“Not at all,” Maggie said. “I’m so excited to be going to the Silver Sphere Awards, I’d be happy to arrive in the Partridge Family bus! Tell me again how we got tickets, I forget.”

“My friend Jenn,” Roy reminded, sliding into the driver’s seat. “She signed up for a recurring role on Space Trek 2022: The Next Generation, and they gave her four tickets.”

“She’s Jade, isn’t she?” Maggie asked. “In Infinity, Inc.”

“Right; she’s one of us who doesn’t maintain a secret identity.” Roy shook his head; that was another thing he had trouble getting used to. In his day, a super-hero guarded his true identity like the Hope Diamond. Nowadays everybody knew who half of them really were; even some of the Justice Society, from the old days, had revealed their identities to the world.

“I’ll have to thank her,” Maggie said. “Be sure and point her out to me.”

Roy chuckled. “I’ll do that. I think you two are going to hit it off.”

“Right,” Maggie said, enjoying the laugh. “You know, not long ago, I would have been just as thrilled at the prospect of meeting a real, live super-hero as I am at going to the Silver Spheres. Now, she’s just someone my boyfriend works with.”

“I guess dating me has, you’ll pardon the pun, jaded you,” Roy said.

Maggie elbowed him in the ribs for the pun.

Part Three

At the lavish hotel where the awards ceremony was held, the valet wrinkled his nose at Roy’s Taurus; but Roy let it pass in stride. Arm in arm, he and Maggie entered the lobby. It was packed with actors, directors, and other show business luminaries; Maggie was starstruck.

“Roy, look!” she’d gape. “There’s Bruce Willis! And, oh my God, is that Emilio Estevez?”

“He seems taller on the screen,” Roy commented.

“Everybody does,” a new feminine voice said from behind them. Roy and Maggie turned to see a beautiful young woman in an emerald green evening gown. The green gown offset her chestnut brown hair brilliantly.

“Hi, Jenn,” Roy said. “Jenn, this is Maggie O’Toole. Maggie, Jennie-Lynn Hayden.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Maggie said, shaking Jenn’s hand. “I can’t thank you enough for the tickets! This is like a dream come true for me!”

“Hey, you’re welcome,” Jenn said. “Roy’s told me all about you; he praises you to the skies, you know.”

“Jenn,” Roy said, a bit embarrassed.

“He is a doll,” Maggie agreed. “So, how do you and Roy know each other?”

“Oh, I met him when Infinity, Inc did a YMCA fundraiser,” Jenn said, maintaining their cover story for any nearby listeners. “Roy does great work with those kids.”

“Say, Jenn, where’s your date?” Roy asked. “Wasn’t Hank coming with you?”

“Oh, there was a last-minute emergency,” Jenn said. “Fusebox and Sky Angel are tearing up the San Dimas Mall.”

“What?” Roy gasped. “Shouldn’t you be over there, then?” Jenn knew that by “you” he meant “we.”

“Naw, the others have it under control,” Jenn said, waving her hand dismissively. “I mean, it’s Fusebox and Sky Angel, for crying out loud. Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys could take ‘em.”

“That’s true,” Roy admitted. He thought, too, that he had perhaps been tactless in what he had said, since Jenn had lost her Jade powers recently. Then, the lights in the lobby began to flicker.

“I guess they want us to take our seats,” Jenn said. “Come on, we don’t want to miss anything!”

“Excuse me,” a middle-aged man said in a low, sepulchral tone as he sidled up to them.

Part Four

“Yes?” Roy asked, his muscles instinctively tensing.

“Pardon me for interrupting,” the man said. “My name is Wilkes, I’m one of the chairmen of tonight’s festivities. May I ask if you three are together?”

“We are,” Jenn confirmed.

“No one else in your party?” Wilkes asked.

“No,” Roy said. “Why?”

“How would you like to sit in the second row?” Wilkes asked.

Maggie’s eyes lit up like a child on Christmas morning. “Would we!”

“Oh, I’ve heard of this happening,” Jenn said. “This is broadcast on live TV, so naturally they don’t like to have any empty seats. So if they get any no-shows near the front, they ask someone to fill their seats.”

“Precisely,” Wilkes said with a smile. “I didn’t think I’d find a party of three! Please, come with me.”

“Mind if I ask whose seats we’re filling?” Roy asked.

Wilkes hesitated, as if reluctant to release the information; then he shrugged slightly, perhaps realizing that it would all be in People magazine next week anyway. “James Melvin and his party,” Wilkes said. “He was due an hour ago, but he hasn’t shown up or called.”

“James Melvin, huh?” Roy repeated. The young star, barely into his twenties, already had quite a reputation as a Hollywood party animal. One comedian had remarked that he made the Brat Pack look like a Junior High math club, with his various indulgences. “I guess he could be anywhere.”

Wilkes showed them to their seats, then left to attend to other responsibilities. Maggie was overjoyed at how close they were to the stage. “I could practically reach up and touch them!” she effused.

“Just so you don’t,” Roy warned.

Maggie favored him with a smile. “Don’t worry, tiger,” she teased, squeezing his leg.

“I wonder why Melvin is in a party of three?” Jenn, on Roy’s other side, wondered. “I mean, I saw on ET that he’s dating Beth Malo, but who’s the third wheel?”

“Beth Malo?” Roy asked. “Isn’t she on that syndicated show, what’s it called? Monsters something?”

“The Mansters Today,” Jenn corrected. “An updated version of an old sitcom from the Sixties.”

Roy shrugged. “I spent the Sixties as a centaur.”

Part Five

“I think Melvin’s handler is the third,” Maggie said.

“His handler?” Jenn asked.

“Sure, I read about it in People,” Maggie explained. “James Melvin has such a reputation as a bad boy, his studio assigned someone to go around with him, make sure he doesn’t get into any trouble that the studio’s lawyers can’t get him out of. A watchdog, sort of.”

“Really?” Roy asked. “I know Jack Warner did that with Errol Flynn way back when, but I didn’t think the public cared so much anymore. I mean, half the stars today do everything Flynn did and worse, don’t they?”

“There are still some things the public can’t stomach,” Maggie pointed out. Roy, who had suddenly been thrust from a world where you couldn’t say the word “toilet” on the radio into a world where scenes of violent death and mutilation were depicted on television every night, could only wonder what those things might be.

***

As the awards show progressed, Roy found his attention wandering. He wasn’t the fan of current cinema that Jenn and Maggie were; his tastes were skewed to the older stuff. Once in awhile he’d see a former screen idol from his youth on stage, and sigh at how old the actor had become.

Their second-row seats were right on the end of the aisle, close to a door with a glass panel set into it. As Roy’s attention wandered, he sometimes glanced at this door. Once or twice he saw people milling about through the glass panel, people with agitated looks on their faces. Once, he even saw the cap of a policeman’s uniform. Something was going on, no doubt about it.

During one of the intermission breaks, while the live television broadcast was in commercial time, Wilkes came up to the party again. He had a nervous, agitated look on his face.

“Miss,” he said to Jenn, “please, pardon me for asking… this is so embarrassing… but would you happen to be Jennie-Lynn Hayden?”

Jade gaped at the man; she didn’t know what to make of that question. “Yes, I am,” she said. She wondered how she had been recognized; her episodes of ST:TNG hadn’t aired yet.

Wilkes’ eyes lit up with a glimmer of hope. “Then, you’re Jade, of Infinity, Incorporated?” he asked. Very few people pronounced the entire word “Incorporated.”

“Yes,” Jenn nodded.

“Would you come with me, please?” Wilkes asked. “I hate to disturb your evening, but… well, we could use your help.”

Part Six

A minute later, Jenn found herself being led to the security office. She would have liked to have asked Roy to come along, but she couldn’t because he maintained a secret identity. She felt out of place, unsure of herself. Since the loss of her powers, she wasn’t sure she could handle the kind of situations she used to.

In the security office, Jenn found a small crowd milling about one man. A thin young man, with sandy brown hair and 1950s-style thick-framed glasses. He sat on the edge of a desk, a grimace of pain on his face. He was holding a torn rag to his left arm; the rag was soaked with blood.

There were two police officers there, and a man in plain clothes who had the air of one in charge; a detective, Jenn guessed. There was also a man Jenn recognized from pictures in the industry newspapers as Christopher Raymond, the head of James Melvin’s studio. He had an extremely worried look on his face.

“This is she, Mr. Raymond,” Wilkes said, introducing Jenn. “It’s her, all right.”

Raymond glanced hopefully at Jenn. “Jade? Of Infinity, Inc.?”

“That’s me,” Jenn said. “What’s going on here? How can I help?”

Raymond seemed nervous, uneasy. “I have to ask for your discretion,” he said. “The fewer people that find out about this, the better. I hope I can count on you to keep it quiet.”

“As quiet as I can,” Jenn promised. “But, pardon me, Mr. Raymond, but if this is as serious as I’ve been lead to believe, discretion may be the least of your problems.”

“She’s right,” the young man with the bleeding arm hissed through clenched teeth. “The reporters will find out anyway. They always do!”

“Take it easy, Willie,” Raymond said, perhaps a little too harshly. Then he turned back to Jenn.

“Jade, this is Willie Lawson. Perhaps you’ve heard of the job he does for me?”

Jenn searched her memory, and then it came to her. “He’s James Melvin’s-um-” Jenn searched for a diplomatic term.

“His keeper,” Lawson finished. “Just say it like it is, OK? Mr. Raymond assigned me the job of keeping James Melvin out of trouble.”

“And a damned fine job you did of it tonight,” Raymond said, sarcastically. “Jade, the simple fact is, James Melvin has been kidnapped.”

Part Seven

“Kidnapped?” Jenn repeated, in shock. Some part of her registered how stupid that sounded, like a B-movie heroine; maybe those things were more realistic than she’d previously thought.

“Tell her what happened, Willie,” Raymond said. “Leave nothing out. Any little detail might be important.”

“OK,” Willie said, then winced with pain as he removed the bloody rag. A paramedic had come to tend to his arm. Jenn saw the bullet hole in the fleshy part of his upper arm, powder burns around it indicating it had been delivered at close range. “I picked Mr. Melvin up at his house; we were on our way to pick up Miss Malo. I was driving, Mr. Melvin was in the back seat. To be honest, he was already a little drunk. We were stopped at a red light on Estremadura Boulevard, when out of nowhere these guys in black leather jackets and ski masks come up-”

“How many? Guys, I mean?” Jenn interrupted.

“I don’t know,” Willie said. “Two, three, more… it all happened so fast. One of them yanked open the driver’s side door, and before I knew what was going on he shot me in the arm. As I lay there howling in pain, I saw them haul Mr. Melvin out of the back seat and drag him away. Then one of them, maybe the one who had shot me, stuck his face in the car and said, ‘We’ll be in touch.’ Then I came here.”

“You drove here, with a bullet wound in your arm?” Jenn asked, amazed.

“Well, I couldn’t exactly call a cab, could I?” Willie retorted.

“He’s right,” Raymond said. “He did the correct thing. We can’t have this getting out any sooner than it has to! Can you help us?”

Jenn glanced around the room. She was a lot more used to fighting super-villains; but then, she wasn’t much good for that anymore, was she?

“I’ll do what I can,” she said.

Part Eight

Jenn excused herself from the group in the security office, explaining she wanted to call in some help on this. At first Raymond balked, thinking the fewer people who knew about it, the better. But Jenn insisted, telling Raymond that she needed someone more adept at detective work than she. Raymond acquiesced, and Jenn went to the door that led to the auditorium. She beckoned Roy and Maggie to her, and once all three were in the hallway, filled them in.

“That’s terrible!” Maggie exclaimed. “I-I didn’t think that sort of thing really happened!”

“Well, it did tonight,” Jenn said. “Roy, is your gear in the car?”

“My duffel’s in the trunk,” Roy said. He turned to his girlfriend. “Maggie–”

“I know, you’ve got to work. I’ll drive myself home,” she said, and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“But you owe me,” she added, with a coy wink.

***

Moments later, Red Arrow and Jenn were walking down the corridor to the security office.

“Didn’t wear your Jade outfit under that, huh?” Red Arrow asked.

Jenn shrugged. “Why bother? It’s not like I’m a super-hero anymore.”

Red Arrow opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again. Of course she was still a hero, powers or no; but she had to find that out for herself. Nobody could tell it to her.

In the security office, Red Arrow was introduced to everyone, and then had some questions of his own.

“Where’s the car this happened in?” he asked Willie. “The one Melvin was kidnapped from, and you drove here?”

“In back,” Willie said. “By the kitchen entrance.”

“We’ve already gone over the car,” the plainclothes detective, whose name was MacDonald, said. “Didn’t find any prints or anything; Lawson says the guys wore gloves.”

“Has anyone talked to Beth Malo?” Red Arrow asked. “You were on the way to pick her up when this happened, right?”

“She called me, about twenty minutes before the ceremony was due to start,” Raymond said.

“She was furious about being stood up, said she didn’t need Melvin to escort her. Said she’d find somebody else.”

“Then she’s most likely here,” MacDonald said. Then, to one of the uniformed officers, “Wojohowicz, get out there and find her. Bring her in here; I’d like to talk to her.” The officer touched two fingers to his cap, and went to obey the command.

“Jade, I’d like you to listen in on that interview,” Red Arrow said. It wasn’t lost on his friend that he called her “Jade” rather than “Jenn.” “Meantime, I’m going to go have a look at that car.”

Part Nine

Red Arrow walked around and around the car, looking. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he felt confident he’d know it when he found it. The car was a shiny red Alfa Romeo, brand new. There was a lot of blood on the front seat, but Roy had expected that. What he was looking for was the unexpected.

Finding nothing incriminating inside the car, the young archer turned his attention to the outside. He crept down on his knees to examine the underside of the car, and found nothing. He was about ready to give it up as a bad job when something caught his eye.

There was something embedded in the treads of one of the front tires. Some kind of foreign material, it had the consistency of mud but somehow wasn’t. The colors were wrong; it looked like several different colors mashed together into a kind of icky greenish-black. Red Arrow dug some of it out of the tread with an arrowhead, and walked off to find a plastic baggie to store it in until he could get it to the lab.

***

“This is bogus!” the young starlet spat, clearly disgusted at the treatment she was receiving.

“Wait till my lawyers get through with you! You’ll be lucky to pick up a job as security guard at a Chuck E. Cheese’s!”

“Once again, Miss Malo,” MacDonald said, patiently, “I’m sorry for the inconvenience. I just want to ask you about tonight.”

“What about tonight?” Beth Malo, a pretty young blonde with the almost perfect face and figure that seemed so commonplace in Los Angeles, asked.

“You were supposed to attend these awards with James Melvin, weren’t you?” MacDonald asked.

“Supposed to, yeah,” Malo snorted. “The bastard stood me up! I waited an hour for him. I’m Beth Malo, and I don’t get stood up, I don’t care who you are! I don’t need Mr. Look-at-me-I’m-a-big-star Melvin to take me to the Silver Spheres!”

“So what did you do when you got tired of waiting?” MacDonald asked.

Malo shrugged. “I called somebody else. Bobby Dee, you know, the drummer for Wylde Bünch, has been trying to hook up with me for weeks now. So I finally gave him his chance. Sorry, Melvin, but snooze ya lose.”

“I saw in the tabloids last week,” Jade put in, “that you and Melvin were having problems. That there was another woman, a younger one.”

Malo shot Jade a look that could have turned molten lava into solid rock; then she snorted. “Did you?” she asked. “I saw that story. The same issue also said that Chastity Bono was having the Joker’s love child. Did you believe that, too?”

Jade didn’t answer.

Part Ten

Virgil Paulson was a technician employed by the California State Police in their Los Angeles crime lab. Tonight, as most nights, he was working late. The radio on the small shelf was playing an oldies station, sending Jan & Dean coursing through the lab as Virgil filled out his report on a ballistics test he had done. Twice Virgil thought he heard a tapping at the window, but dismissed it as his imagination. The third time, the tapping was louder; he looked to see a masked face peering in at him.

“Red Arrow!” Virgil cried in surprise. “Come on in!” The young lab tech moved quickly to unlock the window to allow the crimefighter to enter.

“You shouldn’t listen to loud music at work,” Red Arrow said jocularly. “I was out there knocking for five minutes before you heard me!”

“Sorry,” Virgil said, switching off the radio. “What have you got for me?”

Virgil was a friend of Red Arrow, and always dropped whatever he was doing when the hero needed help. As a boy, Virgil had been raised on tales of the heroism of Green Arrow and Speedy. Virgil’s grandfather had owned and operated a small newsstand in the lobby of an office building in Star City. It had been his livelihood and his sole means of supporting his family. In 1942, the Ace Archers saved the building from destruction at the hands of the costumed arsonist called the Blaze. The Paulson family had been eternally grateful.

“Hopefully this is an easy one,” Red Arrow said, handing Virgil an arrow. The arrowhead was covered with a plastic baggie, and there was some kind of foreign substance on the head. “I scraped this out of a tire tread. I’m hoping you can tell me where the car’s been.”

Virgil took off the baggie, peered at the substance on the arrowhead, sniffed it a little. “I’ll run the standard battery of tests,” he said. “I assume you want this ASAP?”

“Yes, please,” Red Arrow said. “I’ll call you in, what, an hour?”

Virgil looked closely at the substance again. “Forty-five minutes,” he promised.

Part Eleven

Shortly afterward, Raymond, MacDonald, Red Arrow, and Jenn were gathered in Raymond’s office. MacDonald had figured it would be the likely place for the kidnappers to “get in touch.”

No one spoke; the atmosphere was tense, anxious.

Raymond broke the silence, speaking to MacDonald. “Your men are working on this?”

“We’re watching Malo and Dee,” MacDonald said. “If you can think of any other suspects, let me know.”

Raymond snorted. “Try Marva Jackson.”

MacDonald looked at Raymond oddly. “Isn’t she the head of Pyramid Studios?”

“That’s her, the Iron Bitch, as she’s known in the industry,” Raymond said. “She’s been trying to lure Melvin to her studio for years! Maybe she got tired of hearing ‘no.’” Raymond chuckled mirthlessly. “Do you know she started out as the secretary of the guy who owned the studio? His secretary!”

Just then, the phone rang. Raymond bolted to answer it; MacDonald grabbed his wrist.

“Put it on speaker,” he said. Then he released Raymond’s arm.

The studio chief hit the speakerphone button. “Hello? Christopher Raymond here.”

“Hello, Raymond,” a voice came through the speakerphone. It was high and shrill, reminding Jenn of Alvin and the Chipmunks. “The police are there, aren’t they?”

“Why–no,” Raymond said, nervously. “No, they’re not!”

“Don’t insult my intelligence!” the shrill voice squeaked angrily. “I know the police are there, and Infinity, Inc too! I’m not going to stay on long enough for you to trace the call, so forget about that! Here are your instructions. I want two million dollars, unmarked bills, in an alligator suitcase. Have the twerp who was driving the car bring the suitcase to the Griffith Park Zoo and drop it in the garbage can in front of the reptile house, at eleven o’clock tonight. I see any cops or super-heroes and Pilchik is dead. If you think I’m bluffing, that’s your prerogative, but I don’t suggest you test me!”

“Wait–” Raymond cried, but the line went dead. The dial tone rang through the room.

Part Twelve

Silence reigned in the room again. Red Arrow was the first one to break it.

“Pilchik?” he asked.

“He means Melvin,” Raymond said. “James Melvin’s real name is Melvin James Pilchik.”

“Who would know that?” MacDonald snapped.

“Anyone who reads the celebrity magazines,” Jenn shrugged.

“Could you trace the call?” Raymond asked. “Call your people, find out–”

“No need,” MacDonald said. “I can tell, he wasn’t on long enough. And that voice! Old trick, using helium to disguise your voice; but it’s an old trick because it works. He’s shrewd, this one.”

“Well, what can we do?” Raymond asked, the worry and anxiety showing in his voice. “We have to get Melvin back! We’ve already announced his next picture to Variety!”

Red Arrow shot the studio head a frosty stare.

MacDonald shrugged. “So we’ll arrange the money drop,” he said. “The guy is shrewd, I’ll say it again. Not likely to be many people hanging around the zoo at eleven at night. But we’ll have the place staked out, never the less.”

“The kidnapper asked for Lawson to make the drop,” Jenn said. “Will he be up to it? He was shot tonight.”

“He’ll do it,” Raymond said, waving his hand dismissively. “I’ll call him.”

“I have a call to make, too,” Red Arrow said, walking to the door. “I’ll make it down the hall.”

Jenn stood in the office while Raymond made the call. “Lawson? Raymond. Yes, yes, fine. We got the call from the kidnappers. They want you to make the drop. What? I know you were shot, you idiot! Don’t tell me things I already know! The paramedics said you were fine. They didn’t send you to the hospital, did they? Look, don’t argue with me! If you’re not in my office in half an hour, don’t bother ever showing up for work again! Do you hear me? Fine.” The studio chief hung up the phone.

Jenn left the office, found Red Arrow in the hall. He was speaking on a pay telephone.

“Fine. Thanks again, Virg.” The young archer hung up the phone. He turned and saw Jenn. “Did they call Lawson?”

“Yes,” Jenn said. “I only heard Raymond’s half of the conversation, but I think Lawson’s going to do it.”

“Of course he is,” Roy said. “Stick close to Raymond, all right? I have to check on something. Hopefully I’ll be back in time for the drop.”

“All right,” Jenn said, not quite comprehending.

Part Thirteen

“You know what you have to do?” Raymond asked Willie Lawson, for the tenth time.

“Yes,” Lawson said, his voice betraying his impatience. He stood there in front of his boss, a bandage wrapped around his upper left arm. “I take the suitcase, drive out to the zoo, put the suitcase in the garbage can in front of the reptile house, and leave.”

“Good,” Raymond said. “Don’t let anything go wrong. This is two million dollars we’re talking about!” Raymond held an alligator suitcase by the handle.

“What do you want me to do after I drop off the suitcase?” Lawson asked.

“What do I care what you do?” Raymond demanded. “Go home. I don’t want you hanging around, scaring off the kidnappers.”

Jenn watched Lawson take the alligator suitcase. If he was nervous that there was two million dollars cash inside, he didn’t show it. The young man went to the studio parking lot, followed by Raymond, MacDonald, and Jenn. He put the suitcase in the trunk of his own car, an ’83 Cordoba from the look of it, closed the trunk, got in the car and drove away. The others piled into a studio car and followed, at a respectable distance. They parked close to Lawson’s car, but out of sight in the deep shadow of an ornamental hedge. They watched Lawson open his trunk, take out the suitcase, and close the trunk. Looking nervously around, Lawson approached the reptile house, lifted the lid of the garbage can, and stuffed the suitcase inside.

“So far, so good,” MacDonald whispered. “All we have to do now is wait for the kid–”

Suddenly, something struck the ground at Lawson’s feet, making him jump back in surprise. A slender crimson arrow trembled in the crack between paving stones.

“That’s far enough, Lawson,” Red Arrow declared, from atop the reptile house.

Part Fourteen

“Red Arrow!” MacDonald snapped. “What are you doing?”

“Check that suitcase Lawson put in the trash can,” the archer called down, “and you’ll see.”

MacDonald shot a glance at the terrified Lawson, then strode purposefully toward the trash can.

“No!” Lawson blurted, which earned him a very frosty glare from MacDonald. The detective pulled out the alligator suitcase and threw the lid open.

“Empty!” he snarled. “Empty as a defense attorney’s conscience!”

“What?” Raymond gasped. “But how? It had two million dollars in it! We all saw Willie put it in his trunk, take it out again! What happened to the money?”

“There’s a reason the kidnapper specified an alligator suitcase,” Red Arrow said, leaping down from the roof of the reptile house. “One looks very much like another. Lawson had a duplicate case in his trunk beforehand. He put the empty one in the can, and while we were waiting for a kidnapper to pick it up, he’d be across the border in Mexico with the money.”

“Willie,” Raymond said in surprise. “How could you do this to me? After all I’ve done–”

“After what?” Lawson cried out, rage in his voice. “I’m a writer, Mr. Raymond! All I ever wanted was a chance! If you gave me a chance I could write the best film your studio ever made! I took a menial job at your studio, hoping to get into your confidence, get my chance. And what do you do? Make me a nursemaid to a spoiled brat! Do you have any idea what that felt like? Watching him get rich and famous by appearing in crap that any two-year-old could have written, while my ideas sat unread in my desk drawer? Do you?”

“So you killed him,” MacDonald said, in an even voice.

“No!” Lawson cried, whirling on MacDonald. “I didn’t kill him! When I picked him up at his house, to take him to the Silver Spheres, he was high as a kite on coke! Typical; it wasn’t the first time I’d had to drag him somewhere when his brain was twenty miles up! This time was different, though. He was so stoned, he fell down the front stairs and cracked his head on the pavement! I didn’t kill him, his own excesses and stupidity did!”

“So you buried him in the garbage dump,” Red Arrow said, “and took your chance to cash in on his accident.”

Lawson turned on Red Arrow, wide-eyed. “H-how did you know? The dump?”

“The gunk in your tire treads,” Red Arrow said, “contains, among other things, coffee grounds, paper pulp, orange peel, and egg shell.”

“Garbage,” MacDonald said.

“Get back, all of you!” Lawson cried, pulling out a gun. That surprised everyone. Red Arrow cursed himself; of course Lawson had a gun! He shot himself in the arm to lend veracity to his story, didn’t he?

“Nobody make a move!” Lawson commanded, waving the gun from one person to another. “I’m getting out of here, and the first one who makes a move to stop me dies!” Lawson whirled on Red Arrow, pointing the gun directly at him. “You! You ruined everything! I didn’t want to hurt you–I didn’t want to hurt anybody! But you couldn’t leave it alone!” Red Arrow could hear the madness in Lawson’s voice. The years of humiliation, the hours of tense anxiety wondering if his plan would work, the shock of exposure, had all taken their toll. The man was crazed now, and there was no way Red Arrow could get an arrow to his bow before he pulled the trigger.

Part Fifteen

“Willie,” a gentle, feminine voice behind the crazed gunman said. Willie turned his head to look over his shoulder, and gaped. Red Arrow gaped, too. Jenn was standing there, looking at Willie.

Her face and hands were glowing, a bright emerald green! But how?

“Willie, you know who I am,” Jenn said, soothingly. “You know what I can do. It’s all over, Willie. You can’t get away.” Jenn held out her hand. “Give me the gun, Willie.”

Willie hesitated, trembling with fear and rage and indecision. He started crying, softly. Weeping, he sank to his knees. Jenn reached out and gently took the gun from his hand. As soon as she had the gun, MacDonald rushed up to take Willie into custody.

“Jenn, that was amazing!” Red Arrow said. “Your powers! What happened?”

Jenn smiled, and took a big step to the left. Suddenly she wasn’t glowing green anymore. Red Arrow gaped at her; she stifled a giggle.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but the look on your face! I guess I should have told you.”

“Told me what?” Red Arrow asked.

“I figured something would go down here,” Jenn explained. “So I got the special effects department to fix me up with make-up that glows green under ultraviolet light, and a portable UV projector.” Jenn pointed with her thumb; Red Arrow followed the indication to a small battery-powered lamp set up in the window of the studio car she had arrived in.

“Jenn, that was a pretty gutsy move,” Red Arrow said, impressed. “Lawson might still have shot you!”

“He might’ve,” Jenn agreed. “You, too. Those are the risks we take, I guess.”

Roy grinned broadly. “Yeah, I guess they are.”

***

Two days later, Roy and Jenn were having lunch at an outdoor restaurant with Maggie, catching her up on all that had happened.

“I still can’t believe it,” Maggie said. “It all sounds so bizarre! Like some whacko movie plot!”

“Lawson was a whacko would-be movie writer,” Jenn pointed out. “So I guess, in that way, it makes sense.”

“Maybe they’ll let him write some shows for the prison theater group,” Roy suggested. “He’ll have a long time to work on his masterpiece.”

“You think so?” Jenn asked. “When you think about it, he didn’t really do much that they can make stick. A good lawyer may even get him probation.”

“Didn’t you hear?” Roy asked. “MacDonald called I.I. today. The coroner’s report on Melvin found cause of death to be asphyxiation.”

“You mean–” Maggie said, wide-eyed.

Roy nodded. “Melvin may have looked dead when Lawson buried him,” he said, “but he was alive.”

“Then, if Willie had called for help, instead of pulling that stunt–” Jenn began.

“Melvin might have lived,” Roy finished. “Lawson’ll be lucky to get Man Two.”

The threesome were silent for quite some time after that.

The End