2

Scene 1: The Seacoast Menswear abandoned store, Dreg City.

The Khaki Avenger and the Lady. Like minds meet.

The usual anxieties haunted him. Would his disguise hold up for the length of the meeting or would people find out that he was really just a nerdy programmer? Would he get lost in Dreg City? After all, he didn’t use this meeting place very often. Not that many people wanted to meet with the Khaki Avenger. Would she even show up? And if she did, what would he say? As a nerdy programmer, he didn’t have a lot to say to interest women, and as the Khaki Avenger, he didn’t have much practice laying down a smooth line – or talking about his crime-solving methods.

As he made his way to the Dreg City rendezvous in the bowels of an abandoned store, the Seacoast Menswear, the Khaki Avenger's mind raced over the last two days. The police, despite numerous interviews and forensic testing, were as clueless as they had ever been. Two people had died and no one seemed to think it had anything to do with Lu C Brightbight or was even a crime. Only the woman he was on his way to see knew it was a crime and that even in Technopolis, justice must be served.

He arrived first at the small, abandoned men’s clothing store in a strip mall in what was now downtown Dreg City. It was in the same neighborhood where Lu C Brightbight had her office and kitchens.

Dreg City wasn’t always on the verge of collapse. It only got that way after Technopolis rose to world-wide prominence from the sleepy Florida coastal community of Titusville. When Marshall Prescott moved FutureSoft, his high-tech business, from Virginia to the growing Technopolis, he brought with him a new generation of technically savvy workers with high-end spending habits. He also brought with him something else. A rival. His rival, Samuel Mordecai relocated soon after Prescott’s business took off and the rivalry escalated into animosity. As the new and gleaming buildings went up to scar the skyline of the South Florida coast, old businesses like the Seacoast Menswear, were crushed into oblivion. Dreg City grew to harbor all kinds of enterprises that operated best under the radar. Some retro types made the case that it was the only real place left on the Central Florida coast.

The only light was from the plate glass show windows, the electricity having been turned off a long time ago. He caught a glimpse of himself in a dusty floor-length mirror and frowned. A tall, well-built, casually-dressed man in khaki pants and a white shirt with the cuffs unbuttoned, stared back at him, mocking him.

Well-developed muscles suggested strength and vulnerability. Women noticed that. His cropped dark hair and soft brown eyes were set in a pale, vague face. Women would easily forget it.

Kevin McGruder’s face wasn’t much more memorable.

Detective Sabrina Phillips strolled among the manikins that were still wearing their casual clothes in timeless poses. She stopped to finger a pair of khaki Dockers. “This where you get all your clothes?”

He smiled. “It’s not like a guy like me could go shopping for clothes at a mall, Detective.”

“You know,” she said, “since it seems like we’re going to be crime-fighting allies, you might consider calling me Sabrina.”

They smiled at each other in the half-light. He was surprised that he could handle this Bacall-Bogart.

Sabrina stopped smiling. “So? Your turn.”

“What?

“Your turn. What shall I call you?”

He fidgeted. This didn’t come up often. What to call him. People just never got that close to him so he never had to come up with a nickname.

“I don’t know. Khaki? KA?”

“I’m going to call you Steve.”

“Fine.” He felt foolish, which was nothing new for him.

"So, how are the Keystone Cops handling this whole Catastrophic Catering affair, Detective Sabrina?"

Sabrina winced as she recognized Krank's nickname for the police situation in Technopolis. She could only shake her head and agree with him.

"You want officially or unofficially?”

“There’s a difference?” He smiled to show he wasn’t aiming this at her.

“Unofficially, you got guys like my partner, Renfrue. There is no serious crime in Technopolis so no harm in planning your retirement when you aren’t on a donut run.

“Officially,” she said seriously, “the department is ‘looking into it.’ But that’s going to change. ‘Looking into it’ was before the Feds got wind of Italian citizens being inconvenienced in our country…”

“The Feds call the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Messina an inconvenience?” He shook his head. Or at least Sabrina thought that’s what he did. There was something so vague about him.

“My so-called superiors are labeling this an accident,” she went on. “The lab tests have not detected any toxins, poisons, or even biologically tampered food and lord knows, the boys and girls in the lab have run every conceivable test. It looks like this case will be closed by the end of the week.”

“Just in time for the Varsity opening. And the final Top Caterer episode. Being new here, I bet you don’t know what a coup getting the Top Caterer here was. Our social register will be on the map for decades.”

He studied her face for a moment, knowing she wanted to be prompted for something more. They were kindred spirits, after all. Outsiders, rebels, out of place in this city of conformity. He was overworked and misunderstood. Nobody believed in heroes any more and so distrusted his motives when he came to the ordinary person’s rescue and trying to right the wrongs forged by the giant advances of modern civilization.

For Sabrina, she had enough of her dense and chauvinistic colleagues and superiors, obtuse as ever to what was happening in Technopolis. It was as if they were programmed to think that the days of high crimes and misdemeanors were on the wane. Did she have the only open eyes in Technopolis?

He took a deep breath. "Ok, now what's the best looking investigator in all of Technopolis think?"

“Renfrue is contemplating his retirement date.” Sabrina's bright smile flickered and then she quickly caught herself.

He said quickly, “You know who I meant. Are you being coy?”

“Best looking or not – seriously, I think the FBI and even the state department is coming in. It’ll be out of my hands, soon. The victims are foreign nationals attached to the Italian embassy and the Italian business community. The whole European Union is raising a holy stink. The Feds are definitely in, which is putting a lot of TPD noses out of joint.”

“It looks like a no-brainer to me. Poisoning at a catered party? Look at the caterer. Lu C Brightbight.”

"I wish it were that easy.  She is way too concerned about her reputation with Technopolis’s upper crust do this. Believe it or not, she is genuinely distraught."

He said, “Yes, but what if someone else is making her do this? Has something over her. Did you see Technopolis Today a week ago? They were practically crucifying her, running her out of town, ruining her…”

“I know what they were doing,” said Sabina quickly. “But did you notice how fast they backed down from that? Next day, she was practically walking on water.”

He moved away from the dirty window. He needed to get to the shadows. He didn’t trust that his disguise would hold for much longer.

He said, “I was at a few of the Prescott’s parties, saw her mixing it up with that crowd, and believe me, she can be many things, but not distraught. Unless it involved her own skin.”

Sabrina’s face changed, took on the cop’s intensity that had been missing in their exchange. “Oh, yeah? Funny, I’ve been to a few of those parties myself, as a cop-for-hire, and I don’t remember seeing you there.” He didn’t reply.

“Steve, who are you, really,” she whispered. The silence between them lengthened. Finally he broke away and tried to change direction.

"Ok,so who do you like for this? If not Brightbight, what about her assistant, Sandi Bartoni?"

"Could be. I have a feeling something does not add up about Sandi Bartoni. She came out of nowhere and is now virtually running Brightbight’s business. She even has an apartment in Technopolis. By the harbor. How does she afford that? And, you’ll love this, she’s been seen in out-of-the-way places with your old buddy, Samuel Mordecai."

His stomach churned. Mordecai was the Khaki Avenger’s most formidable enemy ever since the rivalry between Mordecai’s company and Prescott’s FutureSoft escalated. Mordecai used his power and prestige as Chairman of Galactron Industries to perpetrate several crimes and although the Khaki Avenger put a stop to most of them, he was never able to get enough on Mordecai for the Technopolis Police to be inclined to implicate Mordecai directly. Mordecai owned politicians and policeman. No wonder no one dared arrest this corporate despot. He’d have to be holding a smoking gun and have a dozen witnesses before the TPD would so much as ask him to move his car from a no parking zone.

"He has to be stopped, Sabrina. If Mordecai is involved, he’s doing more than corporate raiding. He’s starting to branch off to murder. Since the police won't get their hands dirty, it’s up to us."

“Now, you’re talking! I’ll see what I can dig up about Sandi Bartoni.”

He flipped through the data in his computer-like brain. “And I’ll be on Mordecai like an ugly shirt.”

They walked companionably through the manikins toward the door to the back alley.  They paused at the door.

“Hey, what’s a girl have to do to get a drink around here?”

He thought of what Bogart would say. Then he said, “You’re asking a guy who wears a mask to work?”