Emily Richards was bored.
She’d been bored since she was given the convention kidnapping case in the first place. After the last disappearance had taken place in New York, the NYPD was suddenly part of the nationwide manhunt for “The Merchant”, and she’d been left in charge of it. Silently, she cursed her superiors again. It wasn’t the first time they’d posted her to busywork to keep her from looking too good.
Right now, she was reviewing security footage from the convention to try and find a clue to the kidnapping of the latest victim, Soren Cavanagh. As far as anyone could tell, he hadn’t gone in a specific costume, only something that wouldn’t normally be acceptable in public. The guy had no fashion sense, but that wasn’t a crime that necessitated his unlawful apprehension. After all, Emily thought, it wasn’t like this ‘Merchant’ was any better, judging by the witness descriptions.
His last confirmed location was his arrival at 11:04 at the main entrance; the convention’s security had checked him in then. Silently, she ran through the security camera footage from the main entrance, pausing and searching through the cameras for his blue scarf as soon as he was out of the shot. She caught him moving up the escalators, fast-forwarded as he sat in on a panel, and then watched him travel through the crowds, eventually ducking into another convention hall. When he didn’t come back out for a few minutes of the footage, she fast-forwarded, making sure he hadn’t just gone into another panel.
Rewinding the footage to when he’d gone inside the room, she looked through cameras again, eventually spotting him just entering one of the rooms. It was empty besides him, but as soon as he’d closer the door, he looked at something outside the frame and left the room. The Merchant then walked through the frame, his back towards the camera throughout, and left through the same door. The scene hadn’t taken more than a few seconds. She rewound it to make sure of the time frame, and confirmed that there were only about fifteen seconds between Cavanagh entering the room and leaving it.
She switched back to the camera in the corridor. It showed that the door hadn’t opened again from the inside after Cavanagh closed it. “What the hell...?” She ran the footage simultaneously several times, even attracting attention from some of her colleagues. The evidence was always the same: when Cavanagh and then the Merchant opened the door inside the hall, it didn’t open on the outside.
“What’s the chance that this footage was doctored?” Emily asked. “We should run a forensic test. Maybe all the footage is faked...”
“I’ll get Forensics on it,” the Captain said. “You’re needed in the field again. There’s another con running nearby, and we think the Merchant might be about to strike again. You’re to go there and see if you can catch it occurring, or even the man himself.” She was about to ask if he was serious, but decided against it, as she wasn’t twelve anymore.
“I’ll get this guy for sure, count on it!” she said as she left. As cheerful as she tried to sound, though, she wasn’t that confident. The convention centre was only a few blocks away, so she wasn’t sure that the Merchant would even strike at all. There was no way that anything could be allowed to happen that close to a police station, even with a throng of people in the area that he could hide in.
She looked around slowly as she entered, trying to see where he would set up, only to see the Merchant already being escorted by two other men, one a bulky African-American in an expensive designer suit with sunglasses and a red necktie; the other a lean Caucasian in a blue Hawaiian shirt with jeans and his sunglasses on top of his head. She wasn’t sure what they were doing, but assumed that they were from the FBI, to whom she didn’t want to lose another arrest.
As they left in a car, she hailed a passing taxi and, feeling like a movie heroine, said, “Follow that black car.” The taxi set off in easy pursuit, not noticing that they themselves were being tailed by a man on a motorcycle. They wound through Manhattan, passing through Times Square twice and once almost losing their mark at a traffic light, but the taxi driver persisted and eventually caught up to the black car as it reached the end of its journey. To avoid raising suspicion, the driver drove about a block past the car, though Emily still saw which building the two men and the Merchant entered.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” she asked as she paid the cab driver, including a generous tip.
“Lady, it’s on the exam,” he replied.
“Really?”
He laughed. “No, not really. Go on, catch your husband in the act. I’ll be rooting for you.” She grimaced as the cabbie drove off, but focused on the job, walking into the building as though she had a right to be there.
“Who are you?” asked the concierge behind the desk.
“NYPD,” Emily replied, pulling out her badge. “I’ve got probable cause to believe that there’s a wanted fugitive inside this building.”
“Get lost,” the concierge replied, just before his head was crashed into the desk.
“Obstruction of justice,” Emily said, looking around the empty lobby as she handcuffed the man and pulled a card out of her pocket. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney; if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?” The concierge didn’t move, and she suspected that he may have been unconscious. She pulled a radio out of her pocket and called the precinct. “This is Detective Emily Richards. I believe I’ve found where the Merchant is hiding out,” and she gave the address. “I already have one suspected accomplice in custody; I’ll need backup, though.”
Without waiting for the backup to arrive, she walked towards the stairs, seeing that the elevator was on the penthouse floor. Nobody else had entered as far as she was aware, so clearly that was where the two men and the Merchant had gone. She decided to take the stairs, not wanting to alert the men to her approach. Nobody else passed by her on her way up, and eventually she reached the penthouse floor ten storeys above.
Through the keyhole, she heard what sounded like the tail end of a conversation. A woman said, “...so, Hector, what’s the list look like?”
‘Hector’ cleared his throat and began, “The items that the Merchant was carrying at the time of his apprehension by Agent Solomon are...” He cleared his throat again. “...two double-A batteries, thirteen packets of strawberry-flavour bubble gum, seventy rounds of nine-millimetre ammunition, one Smith and Wesson Model 686 revolver, one male Pomeranian, one claymore sword, five Claymore mines, two hundred and ninety blue paperclips, a rock with a smiley face drawn on it in pink marker, two half-used rolls of duct tape, two Mateba automatic revolvers, a Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle with ‘moist nugget’ written on the stock in magic marker, forty rounds of 7.62 by 54 millimetre ammunition, three cans of alphabet soup, seven grenades, one rusted grenade, a baseball bat with cork in the middle, one ‘Dragon Dagger’ from the show Power Rangers, twenty-three horse masks, seventeen Guy Fawkes masks, one Nikon digital camera, one Nokia 3310 cell phone, four bricks of C4 the exact same size and shape as previously mentioned Nokia 3310 cell phone, two bottles of painkillers, a large yellow egg of unknown origin, and DVDs of Kick-Ass, Sandlot, Look Who’s Talking, Bowling for Columbine, Downfall, Das Boot, Enemy at the Gates, The Deer Hunter, Saving Private Ryan, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Independence Day, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, original theatrical editions of the Star Wars trilogy, Cats and Dogs, Transformers, Lawn Dogs, Spaceballs, RoboCop, Mad Max: The Road Warrior, The Professional, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Death Race, Godzilla, Escape from New York, Rocky, Pacific Rim, Kindergarten Cop, The Expendables, Goldeneye, Metal Gear Solid, Death to Smoochy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, The Stupids, Stuart Little, Rush Hour, Game of Death, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, The Iron Giant, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix but none of the others, Dragonball Evolution, The Room, The Cube, Saw, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Pass the Ammo, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Jumanji, Mrs. Doubtfire, Muppet Treasure Island, Back to the Future, The Big Lebowski, The Matrix, Tokyo Zombie, Hard Target, Magnum Force, Hook, Street Fighter with Raul Julia, The Addams Family, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dungeons and Dragons, Masters of the Universe, Tremors, Die Hard, Galaxy Quest, Lost in Space, Get Smart, Mission: Impossible, Reno 911: Miami, Black Hawk Down, White House Down, Rampage, The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project, 50 First Dates, Big Daddy, The Pacifier, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Ghost, The Ring, Ghost Dad, Guardians of the Galaxy, Battle Royale, Sanjuro, Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun, Heat, Bad Boys, Prisoners, The Core, Spider-Man 2, the good one, The Wolf of Wall Street, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Superman, Superman II, Superman III, Superman IV, Superman Returns, and Taxi Driver.”
“Why the hell does he have so many DVDs?” a second man asked. “And why’d you have to list them all individually? I don’t think anyone’s ever actually going to read this entire list.”
“It’s a work ethic,” Hector replied. “I get a job, I do it right, no matter what that job is.”
Alex chose that moment to burst in with her gun drawn. “Freeze! NYPD!” She looked around the room, quickly spotting the Merchant sitting in a chair in the middle. “Alias ‘Merchant’, you’re under arrest for the kidnapping of twenty-three people. The rest of you...”
“Are the CIA,” the large man in the suit and red tie said, not moving an inch. “There are four guns currently trained on you, and if you hadn’t identified yourself as being with the New York Police Department when you entered, you would most likely have been shot immediately.” Alex turned slightly to see that this was the case: the Hawaiian shirted man, a man that looked exactly like him but in a red Hawaiian shirt, a Japanese woman and a pale man in glasses were all pointing guns directly at her.
“What you say and do next,” the man in the red Hawaiian shirt started, only to be interrupted by the blue one saying, “will determine how we deal with you disturbing our company picnic.”
“Hey, I wanted to say that!” Red said first.
“I wanted it more!” Blue replied.
“Bullshit!”
The large one cleared his throat, and the two twins meekly turned back towards Emily. “We were not expecting interdepartmental warfare when we undertook this operation. There is still time before any takes place,” he said. “Holster your gun, turn around and leave. Tell your superiors that it was a false alarm, an imitator with a tasteless costume.”
“So you caught the real Merchant Kidnapper?” a voice said from down the stairs. Everyone suddenly turned and pointed their guns at him, including Emily herself. “Whoa, whoa, don’t shoot!” he said quickly. “I’m unarmed, see? Just a journalist in search of a scoop. Matt North. Here’s my card.” The twenty-something man was wearing a soul patch and a baseball cap which, as he handed out business cards despite the guns pointed at him, Alex saw read, ‘I’ve covered wars, y’know!’.
Eventually, he gave one to the Merchant, who was standing up. As she realised that, Emily swivelled to point her gun at the robed figure. “Freeze!”
The CIA agents all moved at once as she said it, turning their guns towards the Merchant. Matt raised his hands again and cowered slightly in the corner, stumbling over the Pomeranian, which barked angrily as he did. “I do not know what you think you are doing,” the large man said, having drawn his own weapon as well. “But you are going to sit back down right now, or there will be trouble.”
The Merchant simply chuckled at that. “Trouble’s comin’ anyway, stranger,” he said. “The question is, who will it be trouble for?” He started laughing more loudly at that, and Emily couldn’t stop herself from firing a single shot. As she did, smoke started to pour from under his clothes, and the CIA agents covered their mouths quickly. Matt, being closer, and Emily, being slower, weren’t so lucky. They were the first to fall unconscious, but eventually, everyone in the room had fallen.
The only one left standing was the Merchant, who said, “Got a party to go to now. And you ain’t invited, but I’ll let you come along all the same...”
In a flash of light, there was nobody in the apartment but a Pomeranian seemingly having an argument with a pet rock, and losing.
~~
Amadeus Rancor had been elected President because of his name. In fact, he’d run for President in the first place on a ten-dollar bet from a friend who’d thought his name would be enough. It was a slightly sad fact when he thought about it, and meant he probably wouldn’t get more than one term, but running the country had actually come naturally to him. It had been pretty easy to keep the country from getting any worse. If he couldn’t make it better, he was unlikely to be re-elected, but he didn’t really want to be re-elected anyway.
He’d had a perfect good day of doing not much of anything except reading over reports when suddenly the director of the CIA entered his office, looking hurried. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Did North Korea finally press the big red button?”
“It’s not that, Mr President,” the director replied. “It’s... stranger.”
Amadeus listened to the explanation intently, without saying anything at first. When the director came to the end, though, he couldn’t keep himself silent. “So you’re telling me that this Merchant just kidnapped five CIA agents, an NYPD officer, a journalist and three drones from the middle of a safe house in New York?” he asked, slowly raising one eyebrow.
The director simply nodded.
He stood up and punched the table. “Don’t waste my fucking time!”
“We’ve got the surveillance footage, if it’ll prove anything for you—”
Sitting back down, Amadeus just waved a hand towards the director. “Forget it. Do what you think you have to, and keep me updated.” The director stood up and turned to leave, but Amadeus stopped him again. “The NYPD should have a few leads on the case as well; work with them. They’ll want this case solved too; they’ve got a stake in the game.”
“Yes, sir,” the director replied as he closed the door.
Amadeus sighed and fell back in his chair, pressing the intercom button to his secretary. “I’m stressed out. Bring me a taco,” he said, waving his hand slightly.