Foolkiller in…

A FOOL AND HIS MONEY

By Desmond Reddick

“Congratulations Mr. Salinger, for lack of better words you’re cured.” Dr. Mears leaned forward and reached out his hand.

Greg meekly shook it and said nothing.

Mears’s office was typical. All mahogany and zero personality, it looked as though it had never been used. The requisite diplomas hung on the wall but not one of them, that Greg could see, showed that he was proficient in talking bullshit.

Must be self-taught, Greg thought.

“You’ve come a long way these past several years, Greg. You should be proud of yourself; I am.” Mears said, retracting his hand and picking up his pen. He looked back down to the paper on his desk, and continued to make notes.

“Thanks.” Greg said quietly.

“Is there anything you’re unclear of as far as the court order is concerned?”

Greg’s release was conditional upon meeting basic court-ordered parole requirements. He was not to own a firearm or associate with certain people, but otherwise it was pretty free range. They were even setting him up in an apartment for a month and paying for job training. Though much of that was on credit from all the work he’d done around the hospital. He was a model patient, and in fact the last patient left inhabiting the halfway house. So, when it came time to shut it down and convert it into more apartments, he jumped at the opportunity to aid in the conversion. Much of the work he did was helping to remove fixtures and strip walls and floors. He assumed his release was as much a necessity as far as answering the question of what to do with the leftover patients as it was regarding his mental health. They knew full well that putting him in a regular prison would be bad news. The Vault would have been even worse. And so, he, like so many other mentally ill inmates, would be turned loose upon the city to be someone else’s problem.

Budget cuts. Nothing ever changes.

“No.” Greg said.

“Great. Remember that you need to keep weekly office hours with me for the foreseeable future. Say, Wednesday afternoons…” Mears squinted over at his date book before continuing. “…four o’clock?”

“Sure, sounds good.” Greg tried to put on a smile.

“I really think this is going to be good for you, Greg. I wish you the best of luck and look forward to hearing about the great things you’re going to be doing.”

The two men stood and shook hands again, this time for longer. Greg could see the feeling of accomplishment in Mears’ eyes. On one end, Greg wished he was right; on the other he thought Mears was a fool. But those weren’t healthy thoughts. Were they?

The man who was not Richard Rory performed his morning ritual. Stepping out of the shower, he first dried himself and then applied moisturizing cream to his burnt face. Up close it was a sight to behold. From a distance it was nothing but a canvas that he could work with. And he was becoming quite the artist.

Give him five minutes and he could pass by unassumingly; give him fifteen and he could be anybody. He’d previously had the gift, but the past few years have made him confident in being called a “master of disguise.”

He laughed at the thought of that.

The films he saw as a boy had men tearing off masks to reveal a handsome superspy beneath. No handsome man would ever obscure their looks when so much of the world is beneficial to the pretty people. That would be foolish of them.

No handsome superspy would have to go through a daily routine to ensure that women wouldn’t veer away from him and children wouldn’t be afraid. But that was his life now. He brushed spirit gum onto the last of the prosthetics – his left cheek – and gently tapped it down. He rubbed a cream-colored paste into the spaces between prosthetics and applied a light foundation for uniformity. He picked the blonde wig up off of the mannequin head and set it down gingerly onto the ring of spirit gum he had brushed around the crown of his head. He did the same around the loose edges of the wig, and then pressed down.

Literally a new man, he looked in the mirror for a final inspection. The surfer’s shag he’d cut into the wig was a great improvement. He’d avoided the Richard Rory persona for almost the entire decade he’d spent in Albuquerque. The original cut made him look like he was in a Monkees tribute band, so the old identity with a new look was apropos. He’d been in New Mexico for a long time now, but he would be leaving to return home a man reborn.

The man who was not Richard Rory packed up his make-up kit and threw it into his duffel bag. He looked around at the sparse decorations in the house. He hadn’t acquired much. There was nothing on the walls or shelves that he felt bad about leaving. Besides, it would give the bank something to recoup their losses through an auction. The mortgage would be in default long before the bank even started to look into the fact that the man who had been paying it died in the eighties.

With the heavy bag slung over his shoulder, he gave the rancher a final look over. He was satisfied that he had everything he needed. The weight of the bag was proof of that. He glanced down at the newspaper on the kitchen counter, read the headline over once more and chuckled as he walked out the front door.

“Fools.”

“Why am I only hearing about this now?!” Holloway shook with anger as he threw the Village Voice on the floor in front of him. “I have scores of people on my payroll and I need a Commie rag to tell me that the Goddamned Foolkiller is walking the streets? Unbelievable!”

“I’m sorry, sir. I –” the red-haired man began to say.

Thomas Holloway spun in his chair and looked through the man standing before him. The years had not been kind to him. His skin pulled tight over the bones of his face, but hung from his jowls at the same time. His thinning hair was no longer the lustrous chestnut brown of his youth, but his moustache still had a few dark hairs in it. Given the punishment his body had seen in almost ninety years on earth, he was in amazing shape. He could still get around on his own two feet pretty well, but he was long past crime fighting condition.

“You’re right,” he sharply interrupted, “you are sorry, a sorry excuse for a human being!” Holloway’s tongue was biting and acrimonious. He had little room for incompetence, and with good reason. One wrong step and they would all land in jail. The man they used to call The Angel knew all about the difference between law and justice.

“I don’t have to tell you what you have to do next, do I?” Holloway leaned forward, arms resting on the desk in front of him as he spoke.

“No, sir. I won’t disappoint you.”

The red-haired man sheepishly turned to walk out of the office.

“One more thing, Riley.” Holloway had already swung his chair back around to look out the window at the encroaching dusk of New York City.

“Sir?” Riley had a hand on the doorknob of Holloway’s office. Inside, he cursed himself for not being able to get out quick enough. He had heard what happens to people who face Holloway’s wrath: the more time you spend around him, the more likely you are to see an early grave.

“Make it public, will you?”

“Yes sir.” Riley said before he left the office in a discrete but very quick way.

The door hadn’t even shut before Thomas Holloway closed his eyes to the city and pictured the carnage that was to follow. An all new campaign for the Scourge of the Underworld was about to begin, and it delighted him to know that justice was, once again, going to be served.

Greg’s phone started to ring before he even opened his apartment door. That was a first. Not the door part, the phone ringing part. Only yesterday he was beginning to question the very need for a phone at all. The only family he had were distant relatives and they, like all of his old friends, would want nothing to do with him after a murder spree and incarceration in the loony bin. And it wasn’t like he would be a hit with the ladies, either. He was pretty used to the fact that he would be living a solitary, lonely life.

Greg stayed in shape in the hospital as well as he could, but he still left there a withered middle-aged man whose appearance added ten years to his life. A shadow of his former vibrant self, it was the sedation and self-regulating of his…impulses that made him healthy. It had also helped run his body into the ground. You don’t see a lot of fat crazy people. Well, diagnosed crazy people, anyway.

There were tons of fat crazy people out in the real world. They were fattened on the blood, sweat, tears and, most of all, money of the poor. Slumlords, pimps, pushers and politicians. Fools one and all. Fat sociopaths – like the ones who closed down the halfway house to make money on overpriced condos, pushing society’s detritus out onto the streets – deserved to be wiped from the face of the earth. Greg’s face began reddening with rage before he caught himself. He exhaled slowly and deeply as he made his way to the phone on the kitchen counter. He only had the passing thought that no one knew his phone number when he’d already touched the receiver to his ear. “Mr. Byrd? Mr. Ian Byrd?” the voice was cold, expectant. Greg’s chest thrummed with the quickened hammer beat of his heart. His mouth went dry as the sweat immediately began beading on his brow. The suppression of feelings was a lost cause for him at that moment. “Mr. Byrd, it’s Miles Fish. Welcome home!” Greg noiselessly struggled to put together a sentence, a word, a syllable. It was hopeless. “The sane must inherit the Earth, Mr. Byrd. And you are sane. You’ve always been sane. The fools are legion, Ian. I need your help.” Greg was doing everything he could to stave off tears. The sweat rolled down his face and his stomach was in knots. He had all but given up trying to speak when there were two knocks at the door. “Who’s there?” Greg shouted at the door. The man on the phone laughed. Greg took the phone away from his ear and took slow steps towards the door. His heart quickened with each step. He heard nothing else but his own heartbeat and fast, shallow breathing. Slowly approaching the peephole, he held his breath and peered through. The fishbowl distortion of the hallway outside showed no visitors of any kind. “Who is this?!” Greg shouted into the phone. There was no answer, but he knew who it was. It wasn’t that long ago that Greg took up a secret online relationship with a man who became his successor. Kurt Gerhardt was a man who took the mantle of Foolkiller to extremes, leaving a bloody trail behind him that made Greg and his predecessor look bush league. The names they used in their bulletin board correspondence were Miles Fish and Ian Byrd. It could be Dr. Mears messing with him, right? I mean, he was no experimental therapist, but he could very well be trying this as a radical test of his mental state. If that was true, he gave no indication over the phone that he was itching to kill jaywalkers and people who honk too much in traffic.

Greg knew the Dr. Mears theory was nonsense. He moved his eye back to the peephole and the landing was empty. He could see a ways up the stairs, and there didn’t appear to be anyone lying in wait. Slowly, Greg turned the doorknob and pulled the door towards him. There was no one waiting for him. He moved to close the door when he saw the plain canvas backpack at his feet. He bent and opened the flap. There was black fabric on top that he was about to move to see what laid beneath when he was surprised by the stiffness of its consistency. It was familiar. Greg had to loosen the opening of the canvas bag to get it out. It was exactly what he thought: his old hat. Rather, the Foolkiller’s old hat. Looking down into the bag, Greg could see what he assumed was the rest of his costume lying under a piece of newsprint, the Purification Gun and a small stack of paper bound with an elastic band. He picked up the stack and read the business card on top:

Greg stared at the cards for a moment before looking around, gathering up the bag and hat, and moving inside. The door had barely swung shut before he had the bag opened on the kitchen counter. Gerhardt had more than nostalgia in mind when he left this on his doorstep.

The newsprint was a clipping from the Village Voice. It was a follow-up on initial reports of state mental facilities being shut down. One of which being Greg’s home for the past several years. Most of the papers glossed over the closures if they even covered it at all, but some of the left-leaning publications were quick to condemn the move. Not quick enough to stop it, though.

The headline did a terrible job masking the Liberal outrage: “LEITNER SELLS CITY LAND TO CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTORS.” The article itself was even worse, pointing out blatant disregard for public safety now that a deranged killer was out on the streets. The Liberals did their fair share of fear-mongering too.

Greg’s eyes were drawn to a particular quote by Leitner that ran directly beside a picture of the heavyset man: “It’s foolish to keep throwing money into that dump when the real estate is a perfectly sound asset for the city.” Only, a part of the word foolish was highlighted.

Greg looked back at the Purification Gun, whose silver features shone divinely under the tubes of fluorescent light in the kitchen.

“Fool.” he said.

Greg looked back at the picture of Leitner and picked up his black brimmed hat.

“Bird to nest.” Riley thought speaking in code was cheesy at first, but the operations of the Scourge of the Underworld were too important to be traced back to participants by name. Even though the work they did was a public service in a world where the courts seemingly had no interest in keeping the scum off the streets, those in power saw them as ruthless vigilante murderers. The Scourge, however, are not interested in drug dealers and hookers; there are evil people with the power to level mountains out there. They deserve to die so others don’t have to. Simple as that. “Go ahead, bird.” the voice that squawked over the speaker of the smart phone Riley held in his hand belonged to Tom Holloway, himself. As The Angel, he fought Nazi spies in America in World War II, and he still fought evil to this day. Riley saw him as a true patriot. “About three minutes ago, a man with a backpack walked into Salinger’s building.” “Poor neighbourhood, Riley. There are a lot of students there. Do you have a point, or should I send someone qualified?” Holloway had a way of cutting through bullshit. Like a lot of guys his age, he didn’t care to listen to the long version of a story. “Well,” Riley continued, “about ten seconds ago, the same guy left the building without the backpack.” The line was quiet for a long moment, but Riley knew better than to interrupt his superior’s train of thought. “I trust you are following this man?” Holloway said slowly and clearly. What he said was much more of a statement than a question. “Of course, sir.” Riley hung up the phone seeing that as the perfect moment to end the conversation. He was becoming proficient in quitting while he was ahead even though he had only been a member for a short time. The man ducked into a Jewish deli, when Riley knew he had him. Stepping through the door, Riley noted that the place was only slightly warmer than the night outside. He took a quick inventory of the place: three people sat in tables spread across the small floor and one woman sat at the counter talking to the man in an apron. Of the three people sitting, only one of them was a man. He was heavily bearded and of a dark complexion; clearly, he was the wrong guy. Riley thought he’d been had for a moment when he noticed the saloon door into the back kitchen still swinging. Riley reached into his coat for the small revolver he carried on reconnaissance and sprinted towards the back of the deli. He exploded through the saloon door and crashed into the only person there. He had the man pressed up against the door of the fridge with the snub-nosed .38 under his chin before he got a good look at him. The man, boy really, was a good half foot shorter than the man he was following. The kitchen boy blubbered in fear, his chin shaking the straggly hairs of his unimpressively sparse goatee. After growling in anger, Riley turned and went back to the front of the deli, tucking the revolver into his waistband as he walked. The people sitting down appeared startled. The man behind the counter was shouting in what Riley assumed was Hebrew and removing his apron. Riley did not want a fight, with the guy behind the counter anyway. Shaking in rage, he surveyed the deli again. The bearded man was gone. “Shit…” Riley apologized to no one in particular with a passing wave and stormed out the front door of the deli.

He stood on the sidewalk turning his head from left to right. The voice of the Israeli man in the deli emanated from behind plate glass, but Riley was alone on the cold, empty street.

Kurt Gerhardt pulled the beard gently from his face. It came off without too much pain. For that, he was thankful. The spirit gum sometimes hurt his scarred face. Looking in the mirror, he laughed.

Years ago, the burns bothered him deeply, even though he knew that every cop in the state, and many throughout the country, would be looking for the old Kurt Gerhardt. It took a while, but he became quite used to it. He eventually looked at it as a blank slate on which he could inscribe a new identity at the drop of a hat.

He was proud at how well he did while being followed. He was able to construct a new identity complete with full beard and darker complexion in a manner of seconds at a brisk pace. He chuckled as the words “Master of Disguise” ran through his head.

He had only planned to drop off Salinger’s gift; he never intended to have a little fun. The red haired man was eyeing him before he even walked into Salinger’s apartment. He didn’t know why he was followed, but he was sure that it was Salinger being watched

There was another player in the game. That only made it so Kurt would have to stick around to ensure things went smoothly. He had planned for everything except for outside interference. Someone was on to him, someone good. And it wasn’t just Big Red. Someone pulled his strings, and it would be clear by the time the plan went ahead. Kurt was sure of that.

Greg put the clipped-out article down onto the kitchen counter for the fourth time. Upon his release, he was content to live the rest of his years in mediocrity. Now, he was being tested.

His life was in upheaval and the man responsible for it was the same kind of fat cat bastard he used to gun down. The article, liberal as it was, was not on Salinger`s side at all. It was, however, very concerned with the safety of the people with a “sociopathic killer” running around.

I’m not a sociopath; Greg thought, sociopaths are unorganized and sloppy. I’m a psychopath.

Greg looked at the calendar on the wall. He could see red ink on tomorrow’s date but could not read it. It didn’t matter; he knew what it said. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be making tomorrow’s appointment with Dr. Mears. Greg peered back down at the clipping as he ran his index finger over the surface of his Purification Gun. The article said that tomorrow Leitner would be present, representing city council, at the breaking of ground for the new commercial strip mall where the halfway house used to be. Perhaps Greg would have to be there too.

Leitner was a fool. People like him, politicians and corporate scumbags, prey off of the poor and weak for their own financial gain. But they do so to mask their insignificance. They deserved to be wiped off of the face of the planet.

Greg felt a renewed vitality as his heart pounded in his chest. He slipped on the domino mask and smiled at his reflection in the living room window. He was a man reborn. He felt it. When he was an inmate, his will slowly dissipated. He felt renewed when Gerhardt reached out to him. But that clearly wasn’t healthy. After that debacle, Greg smartened up and flew straight for the rest of his incarceration. In turn, he became more withdrawn and physically desiccated.

Now that he was back in touch with Gerhardt, he was, in some small way, in touch with his true self again. He was not just Greg Salinger. Not anymore, anyway. I am the Foolkiller.

It was only six in the morning but there was already a buzz around the vacant lot where Chase Properties was unveiling the plans for its new venture. Riley sipped on a coffee as he sat on the hood of a late model Nissan across the street from the crew. The car wasn’t his but he acted like it was, and that was all that mattered. He wore jeans and a black zippered jacket a few sizes too big to conceal the Thompson machine gun strapped to his back. A Yankees cap rested uncomfortably on his head, the bunched up fabric hidden at the crown of his head a constant reminder of what he would need to do when the time was right.

It was cold enough to see his breath, but the sun was beginning to rise. It was going to be a clear and sunny day. If Salinger was coming, like all the intel back at base said he would, he would be an easy target to intercept from Riley’s vantage point. He would publicly execute a mass murderer, and, at the same time, a new era of fear in the underworld would spring up like it had when Riley was a kid. He still remembered the uproar in the press when costumed villains were being murdered daily. He loved it. Now, it was his chance to be a part of that. It was his initiation into an organization that would change the world.

Hopefully, that would be enough to redeem him in Mr. Holloway’s eyes. God, he had been pissed when he heard that Riley lost the trail of Salinger’s visitor last night. He was so mad, in fact, that Riley never returned to base.

He chuckled to himself as he brought the to-go coffee cup to his lips, sending steam out into the air in front of him. It was like he was a little kid, afraid of his dad. And that was ridiculous.

He did want to impress Holloway, though. There was no hiding that. In a way, he was the granddaddy of costumed vigilantes, and The Scourge of the Underworld is just another arm of that. Riley knew that what he did was a necessary measure. Removing vermin like Foolkiller and all the other criminals that the tights-wearing heroes refused to kill did a public service. Riley was doing his part to make the world a better place.

Lost in thought, he snapped back to attention when a car pulled up in front of him. It swooped into the empty spot in front of him quickly. It was so fast, it took him a second to register the make and model. It was a brand new burgundy Chevy Cobalt with a Gerber Rent-A-Car bumper sticker. Riley could see the driver through the rear window as he slammed the car into park.

Riley stiffened as he lifted the side of his coat to grab his sidearm. The driver hopped out, nodded to Riley and sprinted across the road. Riley pulled his coat back down over his sidearm. The guy was late to build the stage for today’s ceremony.

Paranoia dispelled, Riley shuffled uncomfortably to move the machine gun strapped to his back into a less obtrusive position. He had a long time to wait before the show. But he would be ready.

Greg was ready.

His heart threatened to pop out of his chest in excitement, but he wasn’t scared. It had been too long. Suppressing his impulses for so long had made him weak. Now, he was surging with vitality, even though he hadn’t even killed Leitner yet.

The power of positive thinking, I guess.

The crowd was gathered around the stage risers on the empty lot that used to be Greg’s home. There was nothing left of the building except for the foundation. Funny how the building had been demolished, the site had been cleared and the new owners had received proper zoning, all within a week of Greg being kicked out of his home. He wondered if Dr. Mears had had enough time to take all his bullshit diplomas off the wall before the wrecking ball did it for him.

The corruption of the rich and powerful has always known no bounds, but it appears to be worse these days. Greg heard the occasional story about back room deals and the like before he went away. Nowadays, it seemed like the entire banking sector and all political systems operated not only under a constant state of corruption, but they did it out in the open. And no one did a thing about it.

Until now.

Greg, clad in trench coat and hat pulled down over his face, pushed himself through the small crowd. The developer was giving a speech and Leitner stood beside him, hands resting on the butt of the shovel and mugging for the cameras. Greg didn’t hear any of the words; he was single-minded in his goal.

He was garnering some looks from the people he pushed, but nobody appeared to recognize him or his hat.

“Hey!” a man muttered behind him.

Greg turned and saw a red-headed man’s eyes go wide before he took off his baseball cap. The man began to pull a white cloth mask down over his head. Greg gave him a hard push with two hands and ran to the stage, knocking people over in his way.

The men on the stage were puzzled by the uproar in the crowd, but, like any good liars, they pretended it didn’t disturb them.

Greg burst through the front line of photographers and threw off his trench coat in one fluid movement. The men around him went crashing to the ground. Those who didn’t decided to hit the ground as well, when they saw Greg’s Purification Gun. He raised it aloft and pointed it at Leitner, who hid behind the shovel like it would actually protect him.

“Actions have consequences, Leitner!”

A collective gasp erupted from the crowd. Many of the people scrambled, but no one came near Greg. He was about to pull the trigger when screams rang out to his right. The man he pushed was standing there, now with a white cloth skeleton mask pulled over his face. He held a machine gun, and he looked ready to use it.

Greg was far beyond the point of fearing for his life. In one fluid movement, he turned back to Leitner and pulled the trigger.

pum-SPAAK!

Greg was on the ground, screaming in agony before he realized it was his back that hurt. That noise. He was shot by the masked guy. Funny. Greg was in the loony bin when these guys, The Scourge of the Underworld, were on their first rampage. Captain America even paid him a visit to see if he had any involvement with them.

Greg guessed he did now.

The Scourge stood over him, legs astride, and pointed the Thompson machine gun down at Greg`s head.

“Justice is served.” The words were cold and his mouth moved slowly behind the skull mask as he said them.

Greg tried to clutch his hand around his Purification Gun, but he must have dropped it when he was shot. He didn’t want to give the Scourge the satisfaction anymore so he swallowed the pain and smiled up at him.

Then, he could hear the familiar hum of the Purification Gun and the Scourge arced his back as he turned to ash where he stood. The fine granules rained down on Greg’s face and chest. His eyes stung from the ash, but he strained to keep them open. He sat up and saw a familiar face standing behind where the Scourge was with his Purification Gun. Greg recognized his old cell mate immediately, and without weighing the impossibility of him being there, he spoke.

“Rory? Richard Rory?”

Greg said the name but before he’d finished speaking, he knew who the man was: Kurt Gerhardt.

Gerhardt helped pull Salinger to his feet and draped Greg’s left arm over his shoulder. They started moving towards the street. The pain in Greg’s back amplified the more he moved, but Kurt kept pulling on him.

“Wait,” Greg said through clenched teeth, “just for one second.”

The two men stopped, and Greg stopped to look back at the stage. Beside the blade of the shovel with a three inch blackened stock of wood for a handle was a pile of black ash. Leitner did not escape.

“You did well, Mr. Salinger.” Kurt said, nudging Greg to move him along. “I knew you would. We have lots to talk about.”

They made their way to a burgundy Cobalt parked across the street from where the small ceremony took place. Sirens wailed in the background only blocks away as Gerhardt eased his mentor into the passenger seat. The flashing red and blue lights were visible only at a distance in the rear view mirror. They flickered softly on Greg’s face as unconsciousness greeted him.