SOLITAIRE

Part I: A Girl’s Best Friend

By D. Golightly

NOTE: The events in this issue take place before Marvel Omega’s Amazing Spider-Man # 1.

“Do you work for UPS? Because I know I saw you checking out my package.”

Felicia Hardy glanced over the top of her sunglasses to stare down the young twenty-something male that had walked over to her beach chair. She had to admit, he was cute, but he reeked of juvenile dysfunction. If he had kept his mouth shut and stopped himself from uttering that ridiculous pick-up line, she might have tossed a glance his way eventually.

However, she had come to the Central Palms Resort in Miami for a specific purpose, and that purpose did not involve getting distracted by unchecked testosterone mixed with the far side of puberty. She had also chosen a specific chair beside the pool to “lounge” in and now this buffoon was blocking her line of sight.

She craned her neck slightly to look around the eager youth and saw that the man she had been watching carefully was now busy paying his tab at the bar on the other side of the pool. He was easy enough to spot with the blazing white three-piece suit he wore, which stood out in the background of barely-covering bathing outfits. He was going to be leaving soon and she had to see where he was headed, which was going to be rather difficult with the presence of her new suitor. She was going to have to make him leave quickly.

Still, why go to Miami at all if you aren’t planning on having a little fun? Even if this was a “business” trip for Felicia that didn’t mean she had to flick the pest away with anything less than a smile.

Felicia placed one finger on the bridge of her sunglasses, pushing them back into place in front of her eyes. She ran her hand through her silver hair, shaking it out as her fingers trailed between the long strands. She set down her fruity drink and pulled in a deep breath and stretched her arms out, which helped to accentuate her curvy body. Not that she needed the help. Being a world-class thief required her to keep her body in peak condition.

As was her tradition in picking costumes, her swimsuit was also rather scandalous. She found that using her natural feminine appearance helped serve as a distraction when she most needed it, although at the moment that tactic seemed to have backfired. The lime green bikini she had painted on that morning was only drawing a distraction that wouldn’t go away without some coercion.

She downed the rest of her umbrella cocktail and handed the glass to the young man, whose eyes had been more than happy to watch her stretch out in such close proximity. “What’s your name?” she asked as he took the glass.

“Tommy. What are you drinking?”

“Whatever you’re buying.” She stood up and allowed her fingertips to grace his forearm. “Surprise me. If I like what I’m putting in my mouth maybe I’ll ask for seconds.”

The guy’s eyes widened and a smile sprung up on his face. “Shit, beautiful, why not just have room service bring us something up to my room now?”

The man in the white suit was leaving the bar in a hurry, weaving in between the dozens of people crowding around the pool. She spotted him heading toward the north elevator bank.

“Are you sure you can handle that?” she asked, lacing her words with hollow promises.

“Let’s find out.”

Felicia took the glass back out of his hand, set it on the table resting between chairs and picked up her matching green clutch, and slipped her free hand into his. She pulled his arm to follow her, saying, “Maybe I should buzz my friend to come join us, since you’re being so generous.”

Impossibly, Tommy’s eyes widened even more. “Fucking A, beautiful. Give her a buzz.”

She led him to the other side of the pool and away from the crowd, toward the north elevator bank. They stepped into the vestibule just as the man in white stepped into an elevator. She yanked on Tommy’s arm as she briskly trotted for the closing elevator doors.

“Hold that, please,” she called out. The sole occupant of the car stuck his arm out to stop the doors from closing just as Felicia and Tommy came into his view. “Thanks,” she said as they stepped in. The man nodded at them and allowed the doors to close.

“What floor?” he asked.

“Seven,” Tommy said as he wrapped his arm around Felicia’s thin waist. He pulled her tight against his body, not harboring any resignations about grinding certain portions of himself onto her.

Felicia flicked a glance at the buttons beside the door and saw that the man in white had already pressed the button for his own floor. She made note of the number, twelve, and returned her attention back to Tommy.

Tommy leaned in to her and began whispering unimaginative things into Felicia’s ear. She giggled, pretending that his words elevated her level of excitement. The more he spoke the more juvenile he came off as. Felicia had heard more creative things for a male and female to do on Animal Planet.

The elevator finally “dinged!” and the door slid open to spit them out on the seventh floor. Tommy and Felicia tumbled out into the hallway, wrapped around each other. Tommy pressed her against the wall and tried to shove his tongue down her throat, but she turned her head and smirked.

“I’m not into public places,” she said. “Where’s your room?”

“Where’s your friend?” he countered.

“A phone call away. Don’t make me wait, baby.”

He practically tripped over himself as he moved down the hallway, passing up a number of closed doors in the hotel. He ripped a plastic keycard out of his pocket and waved it at her as he backpedaled down the hallway, eyeing her up with what he surely thought was a seductive stare.

She grimaced at him and added a slight amount of focus to her perceptions. In an effort of will, she felt an invisible nothingness click into place just as she had hoped it would, directed at the keycard he waved casually in the air.

He finally stopped at one of the closed doors and shoved his keycard into the slot above the handle. The red light, which was supposed to turn green to allow entry, remained red. He jammed the card into the slot again with the same result, and then a third time. Frustrated he rammed the keyboard into the slot again and again but the door remained locked.

“Shit!” he swore. “What the fuck is wrong with this thing?”

“Bad luck, I guess,” Felicia said. “I’ll tell you what, baby. Why don’t you run down to the front desk, get a new card, and I’ll go find my friend. We’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”

“I got a better idea. How about we head to your room?”

“Because I never bother getting a room of my own,” she purred. “My friend and I prefer to rely on the generosity of men like you to let us borrow a bed.”

To expedite his leaving, she pressed against him and took the edge of his earlobe in between her full lips. She bit down gently and said, “Hurry or we’ll start without you.”

Tommy jogged back to the elevator in a rush, even though he had a bit of trouble walking normally for some reason. She huffed and shook her head, wishing that she had a way of reliving her past when it came to men. If she ever did take someone to bed he never measured up to the kind of thrills she had with one particular former lover.

She shook her head, evaporating the memories that were coming to bear at the forefront of her mind. She had more important things to think about right now, like locating the man in white’s room on the twelfth floor.

As she walked back to stairwell at the end of the hallway she opened her green clutch bag and removed her BlackBerry smartphone. She opened a custom program that her late associate, Bruno Kreah, had designed for her. It allowed her remote access to the four wireless web cams that she had planted on adjacent buildings to the hotel, each one facing a different side of the north tower.

Going through each camera Felicia set them to zoom in on the twelfth floor of the hotel. With that done she swept down the stairwell to exit the complex and head back to her own hotel on the other side of town. She’d wait until the sun went down before returning to the man in white’s hotel room, and she’d spend the time reviewing the web cam recordings to see which twelfth floor window he appeared in, thus revealing the exact location of his room…

…as well as the exact location of the shiny trinket he had stolen.

Well past midnight, the Black Cat pranced across the roof of the Central Palms Hotel. Her tight obsidian outfit fit like a second skin, tightly wrapping around her every unexposed crevice. Of course, there wasn’t much that was left unexposed. The bits of white fur along a plunging neckline felt soft against her chest, and the cool breeze of Miami night air wiped away any weariness from her face.

Earlier that evening, after the sun had descended and Miami’s local nightlife had sprung into action, Felicia had returned to the hotel and placed her own stylistic measures to ensure that she would be undisturbed.

A small sensor placed on the stairwell entrance to the twelfth floor would alert the front desk to a security problem in the basement, more precisely that the electronic lock on the room to the hotel safe had been compromised.

While she had been in the basement a few hours ago, she had no intention of returning there again. The hotel’s main safe, where they housed their cash earnings, paper statements, and VIP valuables, was of no interest to her. Not when bigger game was in the vicinity. No, she had only spent a few minutes in the basement near the main circuit breaker, just enough time to plant a small charge in the wiring.

The Black Cat stepped onto the edge of the hotel’s roof, peering down at the lobby fifteen floors beneath her. The twin spotlights that graced the front of the building with their all-encompassing beams swept back and forth, illuminating the building for miles. She had the timing of the sweeps down after just a few passes, and there was a small window of opportunity when they first parted for her to repel down between them without being put on display.

Even though she was adept at certain kinds of luck, she decided not to try hers. Not when something so precious was involved in the night’s work. Ever since loosing Bruno she had a zero tolerance policy incorporated into her assignments. Everything was calculated. No risks. No chances. Just get the job done without free styling.

She dialed a command into her smartphone which set off the charge she had planted in the basement wiring. Both spotlights suddenly went dark. She slapped a carabineer onto the safety railing on the edge of the hotel roof and leaned forward into the night.

The thin cable that hooked onto her belt at the small of her back stretched out but didn’t unwind too quickly. Her own body weight provided the correct amount of pressure to uncoil the cable, allowing her to simply walk straight down the face of the building. Steadily planting one foot in front of the other, the Black Cat casually strolled down to the twelfth floor, hidden by the cover of a dark evening that was no longer broken up by two blinding spotlights.

As soon as she reached the correct window, the window that her web cams had caught the man in white moving behind, she reached behind her back and slid the clasp over the cable to lock it in place and not allow for anymore unwinding. Pivoting in the air, she allowed her feet to point toward the roof so that she hung suspended upside down. She smirked as she caught her reflection in the window. Walking on vertical surfaces and hanging upside down twelve stories above the parking lot were trademarks of someone she had fond memories of.

Shaking away those distracting thoughts, she flicked out her index finger and a single claw stabbed out from her glove. The diamond-tipped claw cut into the double pane glass easily. She traced a small circle in the window, just large enough to allow her arm to pass through, and heard the argon insulating gas hiss as it escaped from between the panes of glass. She set the first piece of glass she had cut out in between the large panes and then cut out the second, placing it beside the first so it wouldn’t smash on the ground below.

Hotel windows never opened anymore. It was too big of a liability for the hotel, what with drunken guests deciding to open them for a breath of fresh air and then ending up splattered all over the courtyard. For the novice thief this would prove a problem, with the simple solution being to cut out a large enough entry point for your entire body to fit through.

What separated the novices from the experts, however, were the sensors attached to each window. A relatively new addition by security firms, which she had often suggested when she was working for a client through her own firm, the sensors detected large vibrations in the glass and signaled the rent-a-cops to come investigate a break in.

The Black Cat slid her hand through the small opening, which had been cut delicately enough to not trip the sensors on the glass, and felt for the small electronics on the edges of the window. Her fingers graced one and feeling its shape she determined its make and model. The Kelvot 900. A toy. Bottom of the barrel. She yanked it off the wall and let it drop to the floor, a now worthless piece of equipment.

After feeling around for more sensors she cut another hole in the glass, this one big enough for her to slip through. Within a few seconds she was standing inside the hotel room of the man in white and disconnecting her support cable.

The room was spacious. One king size bed. A desk. A lounge chair. The typical hotel furniture. The man in white had apparently traveled light, with only a single carry-on size suitcase sitting on the bed, opened to reveal a few changes of clothes.

The Black Cat slid open the closet door to reveal a hanging white three piece suit, confirming that this was his room. Beside the suit was a shelf in the closet that supported the complimentary digital safe.

“He couldn’t possibly be that stupid,” Felicia muttered as she ran her fingers over the touchpad of the safe.

Like the window sensors, this closet safe was definitely bottom of the line. In her trade safes like this were referred to as a mulligan, because they were a nice amateur attempt but they might as well not even count. She typed in the factory override sequence and the safe door clicked open. Lazy hotel guests were forever forgetting their personal codes and the staff would have to unlock the safes for them using the override code.

She swung the door open and looked into the safe and couldn’t help but laugh. Sitting in the center of the small closet safe was the prize she sought: a flawless five karat diamond that had the highest grade clarity a diamond possibly could. It had been stolen from the home of a wealthy oil magnate two days ago by the man in white and was worth just over six million dollars.

Few things could capture the complete attention of the Black Cat like a gorgeous solitaire diamond.

She had obviously seriously over-estimated the man in white. He had been simple enough to track down and he didn’t even bother using adequate security to protect what he had stolen. All the precautions she had taken earlier in the day seemed like wasted time now, when apparently all she had to do was waltz in and pluck it out of his hand.

That idea suddenly made her very cautious. The trimmings of a well-laid trap were all around her. She grabbed the diamond and implemented her exit strategy. Entering the hallway a pair of drunken frat boys at the far end of the hall paused upon seeing her. Usually she didn’t want to appear in a public, well-lit place like this when in costume, but her exit strategy had been designed when thinking the man in white was formidable. Doing something out of character would be her best bet at escaping. She winked at them, never one to pass up a flirty moment, and ran as fast as she could for the stairwell.

She kicked the door open, which in turn activated the sensor there that she had placed earlier that day. The silent alarm went off over a dozen floors below her in the basement, specifically alerting security that the main hotel safe had been cracked.

Reaching behind her back, she yanked out the cable line, attached a new carabineer, and slapped it onto the stairwell railing. Without hesitation she stepped onto the railing and jumped straight down the center of the winding stairwell, falling gracefully down twelve flights of stairs. The steps whirled up around her as she descended like a spiraling storm of concrete.

Once she hit the bottom she would disconnect the cable and flee through the fire exit where her motorcycle was waiting. The onramp to the freeway was only two blocks away, which she would be up and on way before the scrambling rent-a-cops inside the hotel had realized that the main safe was still locked securely.

Her sensor would ensure that no patrolling security guard would catch sight of her as she fled. They would discover her actual break in just as soon as the man in white did, but by that point she would be miles away, enjoying her new acquisition.

While she had promised the Spider a long time ago that she would be a good little girl and not steal anymore, she didn’t think that stealing from a thief really counted.

The man in white had been furiously screaming into his cell phone for over an hour. The open closet safe had remained in the corner of his eye since returning to his room. After the initial panic he had noticed the large hole cut into his window and the dangling cable hanging just outside of it.

He couldn’t believe it. How could he have been so stupid? Why hadn’t he just gone on to San Francisco for the drop like he was supposed to? Why did he have to try and get laid in Miami instead of focusing on the job?

His employer was going to kill him. That was all there was to it. The man who had hired him to steal the Rumboldi diamond was going to have him murdered in the most painful way possible. He had been given specific instructions to retrieve the diamond and deliver it to him personally in San Francisco the day after tomorrow. He was told not to tell anyone of his assignment and to be extremely careful.

Of course, once the man in white had scoped the oil magnate’s home and determined that the job was way over his head, he had broken the rule of secrecy. He figured what harm could there be if he outsourced the job? Apparently a lot.

For the last hour he had been digging through his contacts trying to get a hold of the man he had hired to steal the diamond for him. It was the insistence of the thief he had hired that they not speak for at least a month after the job was done and the man in white was having a difficult time getting passed that.

Finally, after the third message service had been contacted, his call waiting beeped. He glanced at the number, seeing it labeled as “unknown” and prayed that it was the man he was trying to reach. He switched lines and said, “This is Bertoni.”

“Richard Bertoni,” a smooth voice on the other end of the phone replied. “I thought I was pretty clear that we not speak for a month. Now I’m getting a flood of messages coming in from you from my various contact points. I have to say, Bertoni, I’m disappointed.”

“Fuck your disappointment,” Bertoni, the man in white, spat back. “We’ve got problems.”

“We? I did my end of the job. The only problem ‘we’ will have is if your check bounces.”

“I…I lost it.”

Silence blared on the other end of the phone connection.

“Did you hear me?” Bertoni snapped. “Are you fucking getting this? I lost the goddamn rock, man! Someone stole it out of my goddamn hotel room!”

“I hear you,” the smooth voice responded. “I’m still just not clear on why this is my problem. You hired me to steal the diamond because you couldn’t do it yourself, and now you’ve lost it before you could deliver it to the man that hired you. I did my job and our contract is over.”

“You can’t just leave me like this. You have to help me here.”

“Motherfucker, let’s get one thing abundantly clear. I don’t have to do anything. Your own fucking incompetence got you in this mess. Now, if you need a little help getting the diamond back then maybe we can work out a new deal. For the right price.”

“How much?” Bertoni asked.

“Double what you paid me to grab the rock the first time around should cover it. If I have to steal the shit twice then it costs twice as much. And no cash on delivery this time, either. This is strictly pay or play. You cough up what you owe me even if I don’t deliver.”

Bertoni opened his mouth, but hesitated. He had already wiped out his own accounts to hire the thief, confident in the fact that his big payday was coming once he dropped off the diamond in San Francisco. He was getting in deeper and deeper as the night went on.

But what choice did he really have?

“Okay…okay,” Bertoni muttered. “How soon can you get here, Slyde?”

“I’ll get there soon enough. I didn’t leave Miami yet, lucky for you. Don’t touch anything until I get there, understood? In fact, you’re better off going down to the bar and waiting for me.”

The line went dead and Bertoni stared at his phone. When he had asked around for a thief that was the best of the best, he had been pointed at Slyde by multiple people. The guy brought new meaning to the term “smooth criminal.” He had gone up against Spider-Man, Daredevil, and several other costumed nutcases. Bertoni’s confidence in Slyde was as high as it could get, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

After all, if Slyde couldn’t track down the person who had ripped him off he was pretty confident Slyde himself would leave nothing left for his employer to find once he realized that Bertoni was broke.

Bertoni clapped his cell phone shut and headed for the bar. He needed a hell of a drink to get through this night.

To Be Continued…