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Behind the 8-Ball – Subpar Heroes

CHAPTER 1

The fog rolled in on its little cat feet, as it did most mornings this time of year in the City by the Bay, and I rolled into the Cornor Mart the same way I did most every morning no matter what time of year it was.

But this was no ordinary morning. Today, I was a man on a mission. The bell rang as I pushed through the door. It wasn’t one of those electronic chimes, but an honest-to-god tiny brass bell hanging by a string with various charms dangling from the end. Mr. Park didn’t hold with electronics. Said it ruined the feng shui.

I’d told him I thought feng shui was Chinese and wasn’t he Korean? He’d shrugged without looking up from his paper, and said, “Possibly.”

Though he looked to be barely in his fifties, Mr. Park had owned the Cornor Mart for all the thirty-five years of my life (and it had been spelled that way for all those years) and if the old photos and yellowed Best of Richmond plaques were to be believed, he’d been around since the seventies at least.

Maybe he was immortal. For all I knew he was some kind of local deity and the store was his shrine. It wouldn’t surprise me. The coffee that dripped from ancient percolators was as much of a miracle as any I’d read about. As I filled my cup with black gold, I said a prayer to the gods of convenience stores that word of the coffee never spread. The last thing I needed was an influx of tech bros and Instagram influencers posting selfies with the coffee machines and posing beneath the dusty good luck charms hanging from the thin metal rails of the drop ceiling.

 I shuffled sideways through the narrow aisles, searching for my goal. I didn’t dare leave without my prize. DT would “have my guts for garters” if I did, which was a gruesome image.

If only I could remember exactly what I was supposed to be getting. I stopped in front of the racks and hangers of candy on display and stared.

Mounds or Almond Joy?

The way I saw it, life was all about the choices you made in life. Big ones, like, oh, whether or not to join the military, and small ones like risking the wrath of your possibly immortal and definitely overly sensitive best friend by buying him the wrong candy bar on this, the anniversary of the Great Dumping.

I shoved my free hand deep into the pocket of my trench coat. The plastic of the round ball was chilly under my fingers. No. I could remember by myself. What candy had DT been picking out of the plastic pumpkin last Halloween?

I registered a presence beside me, and I turned to see Mr. Park’s newest part-time employee, Molly-June. She gave me an upward tilt of her chin in greeting. “Hey, Mr. D. Whatcha looking for?”

That was an excellent question. What had I been looking for? The travel cup in my left hand was full, so coffee wasn’t the answer. The rack I was standing in front of was a shrine to high-fructose corn syrup and artificial colors, so I was going to go out on a limb and say, “Candy?”

She shrugged. “Candy’s always good.”

Thirty more pounds and a couple of years from now, that shrug might make people take notice, but right now, Molly June was a scrawny, late-blooming eighteen-year-old with stick-straight black hair hanging in her eyes and a wardrobe of flannel shirts, ripped jeans, and t-shirts from concert tours that had ended twenty years before she was born.

“I guess.” I scanned the rack looking for context clues to remind me why I was standing in front of bars and bags of high-fructose corn syrup and mediocre chocolate. I was a private investigator, damn it. People paid me to figure things out.

Molly-June stood silently next to me, considering her options carefully before reaching for a package of sour candy. She gave me a quick smile. “I hope you remember what you wanted.”

“Thanks.”

Molly-June sauntered down the aisle, straightening stacks of candy bars and fluffing bags of chips as she went.

Why was I here? Oh, right. Chocolate for DT. Now if I could only remember if he hated nuts in his candy or loved it.

The doorbell jangled again and a big, bearded guy in a gray jogging suit entered. “Good morning,” Molly-June chirped, her bubbly voice a stark contrast to her goth-emo-whatever-the-kids-were-calling-it-this-year look. “Can I help you?”

The bearded guy frowned, bushy eyebrows meeting over the bridge of his broken nose. “Yes? No. I do not think so,” he said with a heavy Russian accent.

Time and tide waited for no man—time to make a decision. A choice like this couldn’t be left to chance. I pulled the Magic 8-Ball from my pocket, giving it a shake as I did. “Does DT like Mounds bars?” I peered into the small plastic window set into the black ball and waited for the bubbles to clear. The multi-sided die inside the ball rotated to a stop.

Reply hazy, try again.

I sighed. “Don’t be like that. It’s too early.” I shook the ball again and rephrased the question. “Will it make DT feel marginally better this morning if I bring him a chocolate bar with nuts?”

Better not tell you now.

So it was going to be like that today.

Small powers ran up in my family, though back in Romania they just called it a way. My mother had a way with clothes. She could reach her hand into a plastic bag and come out with a vintage Chanel that fit perfectly.

I had a way with my Magic 8-Ball, a present from my godmother for my thirteenth birthday. It was nothing big, nothing impressive. Most of the time, the answers were of the ‘ask again later’ variety. But it was mine, and I was attached to the damn thing, even though it could sometimes be as petulant as a cat faced with a new brand of cat food.

Two could play that game. “Hey, Molly-June. Do you think a Magic 8-Ball is recyclable or should I throw it in the trash?”

“What’s a Magic 8 Ball?”

I held my ball aloft like the Statue of Liberty’s torch. “Like a big plastic pool ball but it has a die inside that gives you generic answers to questions. I’ll show. Ask me a question.”

“Um, is Ellis tryna get with me for real for real?”

“I’m not sure what that means, but let’s see.” I shook the ball and looked in the viewing window. What the fuck? Was I having a stroke?

The ball had twenty-standard answers. This was not one of them. That had only happened twice before. I read the answer again. Still the same had the first time. Well, the message wasn’t for me after all. “MJ, come here. I need you to read something for me.”

“Sure thing, Mr. D. Eyes go when you get old, yeah?” She slunk through the tight aisles and reached for the 8 Ball. I kept hold of it. “I don’t want you to shake it.” I held it up for her to read. “Just tell me what it says.”

She looked, frowned, and bent closer. “I think… ‘Fasheezy’?”

“That’s what I thought.” Then it wasn’t my eyes that were the problem, it was my old age.

“Is that the answer to my question?” A smile played on her lips.

“Apparently.”

The full smile broke out. “Sweet.”

“What do you think? Trash or recycle?”

MJ held out her hand and wriggled her fingers. “I hear and obey.” I gave her the eight-ball.

She shook it, stared through the viewer window, lifted it as if she were weighing it, and then handed it back. “Probably trash. I think that blue stuff inside it is toxic.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“It’s pretty cool, though. I’ll take it if you don’t want it.”

“Let me check.” I shook the ball again and stared into the window. “Does DT want an Almond Joy bar this morning?”

The bubbles cleared almost instantly. Without a doubt.

“That’s what I thought. I’m going to hold on to it for now, but you’ll be the first to know if I change my mind.” I shoved the ball back into my pocket and grabbed the Almond Joy. Then I took a Mounds bar and a Kit-Kat, just to be on the safe side. As I rounded the end of the aisle on my way to the counter, a bag of Haribo Gummi Bears caught my eye. I hadn’t had those in forever. Moved by an impulse I couldn’t explain but had learned to trust, I stopped and yanked two bags off the hanger.

I scanned the flyers tacked and taped to the bulletin board near the cash register. No one ever took the old notices off, people just stapled new ones over them. Like an archeological dig, a person could gently peel the layers away and get a look at what the neighborhood had been like in the past. A pink piece of paper peeked out from gaps between the reminders to get a flu shot and notices of potlucks, rummage sales, and yoga classes. You Are Not Alone, the paper promised. Well, it read more like ‘ou A No one’ which sounded ominous.

The reality was not that interesting. Calling the number on the flyer was the first step in the recruitment process for SPAM aka Special Processing and Management aka the not-quite-as-secret-as-it-used-to-be, quasi-governmental agency that monitored and employed people with powers. Supes was the common nickname, though of the few people who had powers only a small percentage could make a claim to super powers.

Once when the nights were long and lonely, and the jobs few and far between, I’d called the number, left my info, and never heard back. Guess they hadn’t been impressed with me.

Shoving thoughts of SPAM and powers and ways to the back of my mind where they belonged, I laid my bounty on the counter in front of him like an offering. “Morning, Mr. Park.”

“Hey, yourself, Dashiell.” Whether his ethnic background was Chinese, Korean, or divinity, Mr. Park’s accent was one hundred percent pure San Francisco.

“How’s it going?”

Instead of his usual grunt, Mr. Park held up a finger and then peered into every corner of the store. I turned around to look but the store was empty. Even Molly-June had disappeared. Park’s eyes met mine as I turned back to the counter and he waved me closer. “I hear you’re some kind of PI.”

“Some kind.”

“I got a mystery here, and I need your help. How much do you charge?”

Not enough, if you asked my mother, or too much, if you asked some of my clients. The shrewd look in his eyes told me he was looking forward to bargaining down whatever amount I gave him. “Depends. Tell me what you need from me first.”

He frowned, eyes narrowing at the cash register as if it offended him. “I’m losing money.”

I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “Aren’t we all?”

He leveled an unimpressed look at me. “Not me, personally.” The closing idiot was unspoken but heavily implied. “The store. Recently.”

“You think one of the workers is stealing from you?”

“No. Money’s not missing. But sales are down.” He began ringing me up on the old push lever register.

“Check the security video?”

“I have. Nothing. But maybe your eyes will see something my old ones missed. You watch the video, do some interviews. I don’t know. I need you to investigate this. Privately.” He pounded one finger on the countertop. “This store has never lost money. Ever.”

That settled it. He was a small-g god. Everyone lost money in this town. “Sounds like a job for your accountant. Unless you think they’re fixing the books?”

He shook his head. “I do my own books. It’s not that. It’s something hinky. I know it is.”

Excellent. Hinky things were my bread and butter. I hadn’t planned for it, but I’d somehow become the PI of choice for the supe community. “Okay. Get me the video footage, a list of employees, and a schedule. I’ll see if anything jumps out at me. A pattern or a change in a pattern.”

“How much?” There was a glint in his narrowed eyes.

As a rule, I didn’t have a friends and family rate. A man had to eat, after all. But Mr. Park was keeper of the magic coffee. It was worth more than money to me. “How about we work out a deal? Free coffee in exchange for investigations. Maybe throw in a donut?” 

“Coffee for six months. No donut.”

“Coffee for one year. No donut.” Donuts were high on my list of favorite foods, but I had my priorities straight.

He grunted, which I took as a yes. Thus ended the longest conversation I’d ever had with him. I pulled a card out of my wallet and slid it across the counter. “My phone number and email.”

He took the card, sliding it into the register. “Fifteen-sixty-nine.”

“For candy?” This city would bleed you dry if you let it. Shaking my head, I handed over a twenty and then dug around my coat pockets for some change. I came up with a pair of quarters and a pair of dimes.

Mr. Park pressed a button and the cash drawer slid open with a ping. He methodically put the bill and coins in their special compartments and took out a penny and a five dollar bill. He then slid the drawer shut, handed me the five, and dropped the penny in the ashtray on the counter.

I pocketed the candy, picked my coffee cup off the counter, and headed back out into the world.

Time to get to work.