Summary:Spidey picks up a Penny and sees his potential value. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
Related LogsTheme SongNone |
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A short, squat three story building sits on the corner in Brooklyn, a sign above reading, 'Penny Arcade', with a picture of Abraham Lincoln in bronze cast between the two words. There's a parking lot around the back, with a pair of loading dock entrances for trucks. One of the loading docks is occupied right now with a squat box truck, the words, "Klein Textile Commodities" printed on the sign in blue, with a 'KTC' in bold print in the center of the curving oval of words, 'Klein Textile' on top and 'Commodities' on bottom.
Inside the building, is a front office with a man behind a desk in a small, stuffy waiting room, doors leading back and to an elevator, and in the corner, stairs down into the basement. The basement door is locked, leading to the waterheaters for the building, wooden crates covered with blankets hiding pistols and ammunition and body armor. On the second floor is an cubicle office area, and on the third floor is a board room and a series of executive offices, both the second and third floor accessed by the elevator.
Most of the building, however, is a large warehouse of arcade machines, gambling machines, carnival amusements, vending machines, and coin counter machines. There are also many spare parts, marked in different plastic bins. There are tables and break rooms throughout the airy warehouse area out back, for breaks, and several bathrooms on each floor. There's no cash here; Joe keeps his black market banks elsewhere, this is just his front company, where the teamsters are used to move his physical merchandise for moving company contracts, to keep the bank cash laundered for an extra fee, beyond storage.
Penny Plunderer smokes a cigarette and sits at a table, gun in his hand, as the Penny Gang and his teamsters unions loyal to him load haggled coats and shoes and purses into the boxtruck parked outside, packing the purchases inside square plastic bricks, large ones, then stacking them in the truck and pressing them down. Some people have pistols, particularly the guy in the lobby out front, with a shotgun braced beneath his desk.
The quiet approach is usually best. No sense spooking the wildlife. The elevator is the obvious route. There is an access panel to the main shaft in the roof, where the elevator tech can access the motor and the main hardware.
No one is on the roof. That doesn't seem right. A heavy hitter would have rooftop guards, because of the risk of a police helicopter…or a flying/webslinging pedestrian.
He REALLY should have a talk with the guy.
The elevator dings suddenly on the third floor as the elevator car rises to the third floor. The doors slowly slide open…but the elevator is empty.
Joe Coyne looks up with dreary eyes at the distant ding, down the hall from his office. He puts the cigarette out in his glass ashtray, and stands up, gun in hand.
Assuming it's one of his gang members, or a union blue, coming up to talk to him, without using the phone, he swaggers down the hallway, gun swinging beside him in a lazy grip.
If they're not using the internal lines, it must be something important, he at least knows to operate under the assumption that they're bugged. Penny Plunderer is a professional criminal, and he knows he's angle, but he's not much of a syndicate honcho when it comes to being a kingpin.
Penny Plunderer turns and stops, in front of the elevator, furrowing his eyebrows. He walks, right inside, looking around, left and right, his head dipping backwards as his chin pulls in, in confusion.
The next part happens VERY fast.
A thin strand of SOMETHING hits him in the upper back through the open hatch in the roof, and he is suddenly YANKED upward a good fifteen feet and then he is suddenly outside, his feet on the tarpaper roof, and looking at a familiar face.
He doesn't know him personally, but he does know him by reputation. The red-and-blue suit, the black spider symbol, the balaclava mask with the stylized eyes.
The Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
"See a Penny, pick him up, and all day long he's out of luck," Spidey says pleasantly.
"HeeeEEEY YOOOWWWWWWW!" comes Joe screaming as he's pulled upwards, kicking and flailing as his gun goes flying right out of his hand.
Penny Plunderer slaps his hand over his heart, panting, eyes wide and his little petite mustache looking like it's quivering on his lip.
"You scared me, Spidey, you really scared me there," Coyne says, huffing and shaking his head. "Don't sneak up on a guy, it's rude, we have manners in New York, you know, we have manners."
"Penny, this IS me being mannerly. I COULD have just swung in, webbed up every single one of your guys, had them expend a lot of ammo shooting up the place, and we'd end up in your office, you webbed to your chair, and me sitting on your desk, messing up your papers as I went through them…" He paused. "We COULD still go that route. I can go put you back in your office, give you a five-minute warning, and then come in like the wrath of Jim Belushi and it would STILL end up the same way. But I'm on a budget, and in a hurry, Jocko."
"Budget, I get a budget, very important. Gotta save every day of your life, Spidey, even when you're spendin'. You know what that means?"
Penny Plunderer smiles, pointing his finger up between them. "That means, when you get yourself something nice, you're saving money you're spending later, because that nice thing taught you to save. A single candy bar when you buy a pack of cigarettes, eaten whenever you feel like it, cuts three meals a day down to two meals, and a drive-thru breakfast the next day instead of a diner sit down as one meal, and you'll be healthy as a clam, besides those smokes of course. Two bucks for one and a half meals, gone, over a two day period, and you were buyin' the smokes anyways."
Penny Plunderer bends his body out as he puts his hands in the pockets of his green pinstripe suit.
"So, I've given you a favor, you let me off a little light, that's the favor for me."
Spidey smiles under the mask. "We ain't done yet. I heard about the theft. Word travels. A thug I bounced a couple of nights ago for a bodega robbery clued me in. It's kinda funny, really. Five-dollar bills? Kinda amusing."
He takes a couple of steps forward, advancing on Penny.
"THEN I hear that someone is ticked off. Ticked off enough to send someone AFTER the thief. To send someone with a GUN."
He stops in front of Penny, and the humor is gone from his voice. "That's when it STOPS being funny, Penny-boy."
Penny Plunderer pulls his hands out of his pockets and sticks them up, shrugging his shoulders.
"Hey hey, Spidey, you're the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, I'm just a penny ante thief in a big nickel town, five of me make a hand, five Lincolns like me get shot a day just so one Jefferson can build Monticello, you know?"
Penny's hands go down, palms up and together, beseeching. "You just tell me, Spidey, you just tell me what you want, I'll get it done, anything, I'm your local Penny Plundering pirate here, I'll work for the king if you just give me a slot to put a penny in, then I'll play some Pac-Man with you, chase those spirits out of the booze business."
Spider-Man gives him a careful look. He sure doesn't LOOK like a guy who'd put out a hit on someone. He's not tightly-wound enough to hold up under intense scrutiny. Of course, that could be a dodge. He himself uses humor to throw off people.
Spider takes a step back. "Normally I'd monkey-wrench the whole operation here, let the cops deal with you. But I'm here for a specific reason. Word on the street is that you're hiring a…pro from Dover, shall we say? What's the current term for a hit man? Independent contractor? Clue me in, Penny." Another pause. "If it's a misunderstanding, then you need to nip the rumor in the bud PDQ. Getting a rep as a hitter is heavy action. But if you're hiring someone to kill the thief, then I'm telling you to drop that little arrangement and find another way. Because if you hire someone, I'm going to know. And then, after I tidy HIM up, and then I'm going to come for you. Because it'll be like that old saying…'in for a Penny, in for a POUNDING.' Are we on the same page here, Penny?"
"I read that book, Spidey, and I didn't like it, so I'm putting it on the recommended list, like the Bible. I read that, I convert to the big man upstairs, I stop messing around and I get out of prison, okay?"
Penny Plunderer waves his hands, explaining. "There's no hit out, you just don't let the Mob know that, okay? Because if you let them know, then the hit's out on me. I'm pulling a little varnish here, taking some money from the Mafia, and giving it to some poor kids down south, in Jersey, that need real nice fur coats for their ladies. We're bagging them in trucks, downstairs, honest, purchased from the garment gangsters, legal. Well, as legal as that kind of deal gets, you know?"
He laughs nervously. "But there are realities in the city, you know, Spidey, you know?"
Spidey tilted his head. Ohhhhkay. So he's running some kind of game. But games can get out of hand.
"You're playing with fire, Penny. Sooner or later someone is going to want to impress someone, and then oh, hey, someone is dying in the street. Ooops? When someone is dead, there's no one to apologize to." He is silent for a moment. "I'm not going to tell anyone. I don't approve of what you're doing here, it's a sketchy way to live, but no one's hurt or dead. But if that changes, I WILL be coming back here. Because you cross that line, you're on my radar for keeps, and I'll be the Best Friend From Hell. You get me?"
"Okay, okay, Spidey, just remember, you need any financial advice, you come to me, your kid needs a college fund set up to go to a nice little town upstate, you need a nice ring for your lady off the pawn, you need an extra tire without tipping off insurance that you blew it on a curb, you just ask, right?"
He grins, nodding rapidly.
"Just ask me, okay? I'm good for it, I'm good for it, we're best friends, not from Hell, no no no, I'm working angles, you're working angles, this is the jungle. You're a big cat, and I'm a weasel, and I eat roots, and you eat rabbits. Just don't eat the weasel, I dig up the rabbits, you dig?"
Spider-Man eyes him for a moment. He's not a mover-and-shaker, but he does have that survivor feel. Someone who isn't strong, but who is clever, sneaky, maybe a little underhanded.
And he does have to be realistic. If this guy is connected to the Underworld like he says…maybe he can lead Spidey to the real bad guys.
"I'm going to cut you a little slack, Penny. If no one gets killed over this hitman rumor, maybe a little bit more. But trust has to be earned, Penny. The more reliable you are, the more rope I give you. But it gets heavy, or I find out you lied to me, that's it. No more free ride."
"No no no, I'm not lying, I'm not lying to you at least. I don't like the Mafia, they screw people into the gutter, I get people out of the gutter. You come to me, I give you a job, I give you advice, I give you a place to store your cash, I give you union cards, I get your material moved across the city, even a nice gumball machine for your kid's birthday, you know, my little hobby, coins."
Penny sweats nervously. "So, can I come down from the roof now?"
Spider-Man chuckles. "I'm interested in information, not something that fell off the back of a truck. But if you know any good deals on tech stuff, I MIGGGHT be interested."
He looked around, then said, "Okay…hang on."
One minute later, Penny is being lowered by Spidey on a webline. Not stuck to it this time, he has it wrapped around his wrists so he can hold on.
And then, just like that, he is back in the elevator, without a thread out of place.
"I'll be in touch, Penny." He drops a cheap Nokia burner phone. "Call me on that. I'll know it's you."
"Alright, Spidey!" Penny calls up, at Spider-Man, waving as he picks up the Nokia from between his feet, fumbling and putting it in his coat.
He moves out of the elevator and heads to the bathroom.
Standing before a urinal, he muses, "Nice guy, Spider-Man. I really feel he could do this community a lot of good."