Marvel Classic Novels--Spider-Man, page 53
He came upon Smythe’s cell to find it occupied by its expected tenant. Smythe had gone through many looks over the years, but Spidey recognized him from their last encounter: lean-bodied, pale-skinned, with wild, shoulder-length brown hair. All that was missing were his glasses. He was pacing the cell like a caged wildcat, absorbed in thought, until Spidey moved forward and caught his eye. Smythe squinted up at him, not needing detail vision to recognize who would be crouching upside down on the ceiling. “Spider-Man!” he spat.
“Ahh, there we go,” Spidey replied. “Finally, a bad guy who understands the etiquette of these things. I show up, the bad guy looks skyward, shouts my name in disbelief, and wets himself.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, arachnid. You wouldn’t frighten me even if there weren’t inches of Lexan-reinforced glass between us.”
“And that’s another thing I like about the more educated class of villain. Too many people out there don’t know the difference between insects and arachnids. But you always get it right, and I just want you to know, Aly, that I appreciate it.”
“Keep ranting, Spider-Man. The guards will be by on their rounds any minute now.”
“Oh, I just stopped by for a brief chat. How are you, Aly? Enjoying the prison diet? Getting enough exercise? Making any new friends? Built any good robots lately?”
Smythe narrowed his eyes. “Ahh. Yes, I heard about your little run-ins. And you think that I somehow had something to do with them? From in here?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time an inmate here made creative use of the machine shop.”
‘‘Yes, the escapes of Dr. Octopus and the Vulture are the stuff of legend on the prison grapevine. Which is why they don’t let technically gifted inmates use the machine shop without extremely close supervision anymore. Anyway, I’m insulted that you’d attribute such crude pieces of hardware to me. Trust me, Spider-Man, when you meet your demise at the claws of a Spider -Slayer, you will know it is my handiwork.
“And besides, weren’t you accusing Jameson of being behind the attacks?”
“I’m exploring various leads,” Spidey demurred.
“Ha! Are you actually addle-brained enough to imagine I would work with that smear upon humanity? The man who engineered my father’s death by pitting him against you in the first place?”
“Hey, he came to Jonah!”
But Smythe ignored him. “The man who’s responsible for my being incarcerated here? Who took a baseball bat to me in our last encounter? I want him dead, Spider-Man! Possibly more than I want you dead, although that’s certainly subject to change.”
“Aww, hey, Aly, you should be grateful to me! You used to be a fat slob, but after all these years of chasing me, you’ve got yourself a Bowflex body.”
“I actually liked being a fat slob, Spider-Man. It was a lot less work. But I can’t let myself go again until I see you and Jameson dead. I just hope that whoever’s behind these robots takes care of at least half that task for me.”
“And just who might that be?”
Smythe gave a menacing chuckle. “I only wish I knew, Spider-Man, so I could have the pleasure of not telling you. I’ll just have to settle for the pleasure of knowing you’re completely clueless.”
Spider-Man waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. ‘‘Aww, come on. Don’t I even get a malevolent villain laugh? Whatever happened to etiquette?”
But his spider-sense began to tingle, and a moment later he heard footsteps. “Maybe the guards will give you a lesson on the etiquette of entering where you’re not invited. Good-bye, Spider-Man.”
Spidey hastily made his way out of the area—but he still had one more stop to make before leaving the prison. He needed to make sure that Electro was still incarcerated. He found him in a wing reserved for “special” prisoners, in a cell specially outfitted for him with insulated rubber walls. He couldn’t resist taunting him through the thick insulated glass. “You in a rubber room. Somehow, Sparky, it seems like a match made in heaven.”
‘‘You!” Dillon snarled and clenched his fists, his hairs standing on end and crackling. But nothing more than that happened; the Avengers had made sure he was discharged, and without access to an electrical source, he wasn’t able to charge up the living chemical battery that was his body. All he had right now was whatever charge his own nervous system could generate. The insulation was more to keep him from influencing electrical systems outside his cell than to keep him from zapping his way out.
But then Dillon cooled down and laughed. “Mock me all you want, webhead—the fact is, I beat you. Again. And this time I hardly had to break a sweat.”
“Maybe, but what do you have to show for it? You didn’t get the diamonds, you lost your cool new toys, and you got beat up by a girl!”
“Yeah, sure. But I hear you’re still having robot troubles anyway.”
Spidey moved closer. “Where did you hear that?”
Dillon shrugged. “Around.”
“If you know something—”
“What could I know from in here? I don’t even have a TV or a radio. Some cops questioned me about it, that’s all. That’s the catch with these powers—when I’m in here, it’s no phones, no lights, no motorcars, not a single lux-u-ree.” He smirked. “Just gives me more incentive to get out again.”
Spidey tilted his head. “So why did the cops ask you about it, I’m wondering?”
“Because cops are idiots. Always looking into every lead, even the stupid ones. I stole some robots, staged a heist, and you got in the way, so naturally when some wacko sends a homemade robot to kill you personally, they gotta ask if I know anything. I told ’em what I know—that they’re a bunch of clueless morons.” He chuckled. “Hell, I don’t need to kill you—I already beat you.”
“Great! So now you can retire and give up this life of crime.”
“You wish.”
Spidey left before the guards came by. He was tired of Electro’s self-satisfied attitude, and there wasn’t much to learn here anyway. Although Electro may have learned how to remote-control robots, there was no way he was capable of building them.
* * *
“SO who does that leave?” MJ asked as they lay together in bed the following night—practically the first chance they’d gotten to talk since brunch the day before, although they’d waited to talk until after they’d addressed more pressing marital priorities. And he’d let her go first, since she was in a surly mood. She’d gone to visit a small theatrical bookshop she knew, located just south of the Theater District and catering to drama students. They’d been helpful to her when she’d just started out, but she’d found that, in an odd bit of reverse elitism, they’d cooled to her now that she was actually getting more-or-less regular work on the stage. They seemed to think that working actors considered themselves too good to lower themselves for a visit, and the fact that MJ had come of her own accord, taking time out of her busy schedule to drop in and say hello, hadn’t registered with them enough to warm their cold shoulders. But she’d decided to follow Peter’s example and refuse to be bowed by their negativity, resolving to brush it off and just not bother with them anymore. Maybe she was too good for them, if not for the reasons they assumed.
But despite her show of unconcern, she’d been happy to change the subject back to Peter’s investigation, helping him go through the list of suspects. “There’s the Tinkerer,” Peter told her, referring to Phineas Mason, an inventor extraordinaire who supplied mechanical armor, weapons, and other devices for various criminals. “Robots aren’t his usual line, but he’s built one or two that I know of.”
“But what motive? I mean, maybe he’s not your biggest fan, but he’s never really gone after you directly, has he? He’s a businessman, so where’s the profit in it?”
“You’re right.” Peter chuckled. “In fact, a lot of his business comes from people looking for stronger weapons to bash me with. I’ve probably put his grandkids through college. If he has grandkids.”
“If so, they must get the coolest toys.”
“Anyway, I asked Felicia to look into it.” MJ cooled at the mention of his old flame. But Felicia Hardy had done business with the Tinkerer in the past, purchasing power-enhancing devices to compensate for the loss of her superpowers and allow her to continue as the Black Cat. “They have a business relationship, so she should be able to find out if he’s involved in this. I don’t think it’s likely, though.”
“So who else is a suspect?” MJ mused. “What about the Robot Master?”
Peter shook his head. “I checked that. Stromm’s still dormant.”
“Dormant?”
Peter slapped his head. “Didn’t I tell you about that? It happened just before I found out you were still alive.” MJ winced at the reminder of her abduction. Peter went on to tell her about his latest encounter with Mendel Stromm, the industrialist/inventor who had turned to crime as the Robot Master. Instead of trying to attack him with robots as he’d done in the past, Stromm had actually contacted Spider-Man for help. A computer program Stromm had created in his own image had gone Borg on him, trying to take over his mind and disassembling his body until he was only a head attached to life-support equipment in a lair beneath a ConEd switching station. The program had experimented with the city’s power grid, attempting to assert control, and in the process had overloaded the power lines in Times Square and caused a storm of electrical surges, jeopardizing hundreds of lives simply by learning how to walk. Stromm had told him of its drive to reproduce itself and take over the world’s computer networks. The only way to prevent the ruthless program from spreading, he had said, was to kill Stromm himself—putting him out of his misery in the process. Unable to take a life even in those circumstances, Peter had instead gotten a programmer friend to devise a virus that would freeze Stromm and his AI doppelganger in a recursive loop, essentially putting them in a coma until he could find a way to rescue Stromm the man without unleashing Stromm the program on the world. Unfortunately, the demands of his life had left him little time to work on a solution, and though he kept the problem in mind, he had made no progress. “Stromm’s still as comatose as ever, and I long since dismantled all the equipment that wasn’t part of his life support. So it can’t be him.”
“Who else?”
“Well . . . there’s Edwin Hills, the software billionaire. When you were out in Hollywood, he sent a robot after me as part of some crazy scheme to stage hero-villain fights on underground TV and take bets on the winners. But his robot was just so—so—lame. It really wasn’t made for fighting. I mean, it announced its attacks before it made them! No way could a dweeb like that come up with anything as devious as that chopperbot.”
“What about Doc Ock? He invented those arms.”
“But he’s never done much with robots otherwise. He’s too egotistical to let a machine do his Spidey-killing for him—except for the arms, but he thinks of them as part of himself. And he’s still in the news after that Triple X business—if he’d broken out since then, we would’ve heard.”
“Any other robots in your checkered past?”
Peter had little else to offer besides a few miscellaneous encounters. There were numerous supervillains with the technical knowhow—the Wizard, Arcade, even Dr. Doom—but none of them had motives that he could discern. The Wizard mostly targeted the Fantastic Four, and Arcade specialized in android doubles and ridiculously elaborate deathtraps. And Doom considered Spider-Man beneath his notice. He’d once told off the Latverian dictator to his face, but that had been after saving his life, which by Doom’s twisted sense of honor had made them even.
“And the bottom line is, Jameson’s the one who set off my spider-sense. He’s my best suspect.”
“He’s no robot-builder.”
“But his wife is.”
“Marla? You think she’s behind this, too?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out tomorrow.”
“But she doesn’t have anything against Spider-Man.”
“She’s still Jonah’s wife. We often do things for our spouses that we’d never do for any other reason.”
MJ smirked. “Tell me about it. I’m one of the world’s leading experts on that subject.”
“Well,” Peter said, stroking her hair, “there are some compensations for that, aren’t there?”
“Ohh, you bet,” she replied with a throaty laugh. “That spider-flexibility of yours has some very interesting uses.”
“I can do some really cool things with my webbing, too. I’d be happy to demonstrate . . .”
“Maybe—if you’re a really good boy.”
* * *
SPIDER-MAN felt a little uneasy whenever his business took him to the Upper East Side. This was pretty much the priciest swath of real estate in the whole country, a favorite stomping ground of movers and shakers, and Spidey always felt like he should don a white tie and cuff links over his costume before he went there. It was just a bit too rarefied for a middle-class boy from Queens.
But that, he reminded himself, was the old, insecure Spider-Man. What makes the people who live here any better than me? he asked himself as he swung past Museum Mile in the brisk morning air. Most of them either inherited their wealth, got it by looking good on camera, or conned it out of people one way or another. I mean, come on, a lot of them are politicians! And one of them is J. Jonah Jameson.
Besides, he’d lived not far from here once, briefly, back when MJ’s career had been particularly lucrative. And it didn’t make me any better than I am now, living in a crumbling brownstone with an insane rottweiler plotting against me. I’m the one who keeps the city safe for people like them. So I have as much right to be here as anyone.
Particularly since his own life was on the line. If Marla Jameson was the one building the robots, he was determined to find out. So he took up a perch across the street from the building whose penthouse she and Jonah shared, and he waited.
After a while, he saw a familiar figure—fortyish, short-haired, bespectacled, severe but attractive in a Lilith Sternin kind of way—emerging from the lobby and being escorted to a waiting car by a pair of hired -security types. Jonah’s anticipated me, he realized. He’s got Marla guarded. That’s okay, though—I don’t want to at tack her, just see where she goes. He knew she had a lab at Empire State University, but if she was working on a secret project, she might be operating out of some other facility.
Still, he crawled down the side of the building to get within range to fire a spider-tracer at her car. He was confident of his ability to track it visually, but just in case he lost it in traffic or got sidetracked by a crime in progress, the tracer’s signal would help him find it again.
But before he could fire the tracer off: one of the guards spotted him, calling, “Spider-Man, ten o’clock high!” Blast. Jonah did a good job telling them what to look for. So much for the subtle approach. There would be no way to tail Marla now.
So he decided to conduct an impromptu interview instead. The guards were drawing on him, but he webbed their guns and came in for a landing atop the car. “We need to talk, Mrs. Jameson,” he said—even as he realized he was getting a danger buzz from her, just like he’d gotten from Jonah. ‘‘What have you got to do with the robot attacks?” he demanded.
But the danger signal intensified, alerting Spidey to new threats coming from all around. More security troops were pouring out from the lobby and the sides of the building, and a sudden impulse told Spidey to look down at his chest, where he saw several points of laser light converging. “Stand down, wall-crawler, or we will open fire!” someone called.
“I know how to stand up, but how do I stand down? Is that like a handstand?” He made a shrugging gesture as he spoke, but it was just to get his arms into position to fire a spray of web-mesh before him as a shield. An instant later, he was flipping back behind the car and ducking beneath it, then slithering under the parked car ahead of it, all in the span of a few seconds. Glancing back, he saw Marla being hustled back into the building by the guards. He fired a tracer back to stick to the undercarriage of Marla’s car, but it was a long shot, since he expected Jameson’s security would locate and neutralize it before they’d let this car be used again. He had missed his chance, and whatever Marla was up to, she’d be extra-careful from now on. Rather than try to confront the security, Spidey kept crawling under cars until he found a sewer grate and vanished underground.
But now I know that she and Jonah are both up to no good, he thought as he made his way toward the nearest Lexington Avenue subway station to catch a ride home. Maybe that’s the most important thing I needed to learn right there.
SEVEN
FROM A THREAD
NATURALLY, Jameson was all over the incident with Marla in his blog. He ranted about how Spider-Man had begun stalking his family, how his wife was afraid to go out on the streets and besieged in her own home, and so forth. He cited the web-stinger’s increasingly confrontational attitude as evidence of his growing instability—even as Peter grew increasingly convinced that Jameson was the one who’d flipped his wig. Frustratingly, though, public opinion seemed more sympathetic toward Jameson. The local news was full of vox populi interviews of people expressing concern for “that poor Mrs. Jameson,” labeling Spider-Man a stalker and making some rather disturbing insinuations about his intentions toward Marla. Even the headlines in more balanced newspapers like the Times and the Globe were beginning to sound more like a typical Bugle banner.
It doesn’t matter, Peter reassured himself. I’ve been accused of worse before, and the truth has always come out. Once I expose the Jamesons’ true colors, people will see. He was growing increasingly certain of their guilt in the robot incidents. Felicia had reported that the Tinkerer had no robots in the works, and was in fact on an out-of-state vacation. Peter had found that suspicious, but Felicia had assured him of her thoroughness in confirming the alibi. She’d investigated his vacant workshops for herself: confirming there were no major robotics projects under way. She’d tracked his activities and found no sign that he’d received the necessary materiel for such a project. She’d even obtained airport footage that showed him boarding a plane from JFK and disembarking in Miami, although she remained vague about the methods she’d used to obtain the information (and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know). Felicia was confident that Mason was not involved, and Peter trusted that where a possible threat to his safety was concerned, the Black Cat would not let go of a lead unless she was certain it went nowhere. So with other viable suspects thin on the ground, the Jamesons looked more and more likely to be guilty.
