Chapter 4
Three nights later, Tony stepped into an alley and dug for the domino mask in his pocket. Parker had sent one over by courier the previous day after MJ breezed into the YMCA, picking up the admission bracelet from the Black Cat's locker. According to Parker, MJ had been disappointed to find it was only an 18-karat white gold tennis bracelet. “You'd think shady bajillionaires would have better party favors,” she'd complained.
Tony was loitering in the Financial District, close to a swanky building whose proximity to Stark Tower he was still coming to grips with. There was a time when no one would have dared operate on this scale so close to an Avenger's shadow.
Tony was kind of taking it personally. Had Iron Man only ever been a bilge pump, and the crooks were flooding through the crannies now that he wasn't regularly scooping them back out of the boat?
He blew out a dissatisfied breath, feeling antsy. A surreptitious entrance to the bazaar meant that Tony could put on the domino mask here and wait, away from the curious stares of businessmen hurrying through the snow, and last-minute shoppers hurriedly finding consolation gifts. Though snowflakes drifted lazily down, the night didn't feel especially cold to a desensitized New Yorker like Tony. All it really meant was there would be a risk to his Italian shoes when the banks melted.
He'd never worn a domino mask. Tony wasn't even especially sure why they worked. At least these extended a little further down the face. Rules were rules, however: buyers could not be masked; the Bazaar existed in a precarious no-man's-land of sustained liability between parties privy to each other's faces. If they were paranoid, they could always place their bids online. Buyers' bodyguards, however...who cared about them?
“Psst,” hissed a voice from the mouth of the alley.
Tony turned to see Parker sliding on his own mask as he approached, flanked by a haughty-looking woman, wrapped in furs, whom Tony didn't recognize. “Wait—” he began in alarm, frowning, then stopped when he discerned Mary Jane's ironic gaze peering out from heavily kohled eyes.
She could have passed him on the street and he wouldn't have recognized her. It'd been a long time since they'd been face-to-face, but that wasn't why. MJ had applied clever makeup and hair chalk so that she looked the very picture of old money. Her nose and cheekbones were sharply contoured and her hair—now a rich brown—was swept up in an old-fashioned Downton Abbey-goes-to-the-senior-prom updo. A sensational, elaborate necklace sprawled across the sliver of décolletage just visible between the furs. Her smirk told him she'd noticed his false start.
Unwilling to admit he'd been hoodwinked for a heartbeat, Tony gestured at the furs MJ clutched with one gloved hand. “Where'd you get this getup?”
“You are looking at a woman of resources,” said MJ throatily. She allowed the air of mystery to linger for a moment before grinning. “I'm still friends with an awful lot of theater managers. If this coat shows up on the nightly news, the Lincoln Center was never involved.”
Beside her, Tony could perceive suppressed anxiety through the domino mask Parker wore. Tony had been frankly astonished when the kid had volunteered his wife—ex-wife, or ex-ex-wife, or whatever she was now—for this dog (and gun) and pony show. Though the fact that he had done so pointed to some momentous personal reckoning from his inter-dimensional hike, Parker was clearly still squashing severe misgivings.
If partly to reassure Parker, MJ betrayed no personal reservations. “Your mask is slipping,” she told Tony, reaching with a dainty finger to push it back against his face. “I always wondered how these things stay on.”
“Mine itches,” Parker grumbled, fussing with his. “What kind of adhesive is this? I just know I'm gonna get a rash.”
He wore a suit Tony was pretty sure the Metropolitan Opera would also disavow if needed. It almost fit. Apparently MJ had mussed some hair chalk around Parker's head, because the gray hairs Tony had noticed the other day were suspiciously gone.
Tony peered at the two. “Are you wearing the contacts I gave you?”
Both Parker and MJ looked back with eyes only a shade off from their regular hue. Keen to obfuscate any chances of detection at the bazaar, Tony had supplied them all with contact lenses which interfered with iris recognition, and even supplied a false identity. They worked best when they closely imitated a person's natural eye color. Anyone who ran their biometrics against an existing database would only find Lady Marina Dejanac, a Symkarian baroness whose lands brushed the Latverian border, and the two American grunts she'd hired as her bodyguards during sojourns abroad.
Tony had set up the identities MJ suggested and reprogrammed the bracelet chip, but he had no idea why she was so sure Symkarian intelligence wouldn't flag the invention of a fake noble. Didn't that guy from A Knight's Tale get thrown in the stocks for something like that?
“Off we go,” he said with an exhale. They began striding toward the building's entrance around the back.
It'd been a little while since Tony had taken on any kind of assignment. Especially one involving subterfuge. Part of the charm of being Iron Man was kicking down the door. Or shooting it down. Or violently creating new doors. Doors had become something of a creative interpretation for the Avengers.
Infiltration wasn't Tony's specialty because infiltration bored Tony. He would have fiddled with the idea of hologram disguises, but he wouldn't be able to sneak the battery past the security net. So he grumbled until it was time for him and Parker to assume positions on either side of MJ like some kind of disgruntled flotation devices.
At the sight of the burly doormen guarding the unremarkable utility door around the corner, MJ paused just out of their sight and glanced to either side. “Could you two act a little more like the hired help?”
“How?”
“Get into character. Stand up straight. Look mean.”
She removed her hands from her furs to sort of fluff up their posture. Both men sucked their gut in just a little while MJ continued: “Just because you've got domino masks doesn't mean people can't interpret your expressions. You're hired muscle, remember? Intimidate threats away before they happen.”
“We are actual superheroes,” Tony griped, “and you're telling me we could have just menaced thugs into surrendering this whole time?”
“Body language is currency around here,” MJ lectured with a small grin. “Always imply you've got more money in the bank.”
“I always try,” muttered Parker.
“What do you know about underworld markets?” Tony demanded of Mary Jane, looking between her and Parker. “Is this like date night for you two?”
MJ smoothed a wrinkle from her satin glove. “I just know a stage when I see one.”
She stood back and inspected them, then gave a shrug which suggested the effect was underwhelming but would suffice for now. Turning, she clutched her furs again, then adjusted her own posture, raising her chin, and strode forward in her stilettos.
The guards glanced over at their approach, then assessed Mary Jane with a professional scrutiny that didn't completely obscure their appreciation.
She did not deign to introduce herself, but merely held out one lily-white wrist and displayed the white-gold bracelet to them.
“I trust ze next token will be less tacky,” she complained haughtily in a Symkarian accent that took Tony by surprise. “I am here to appraise objet d'art, not bid on livestock.”
“Our apologies, madam,” said the shaven-headed guard as the other man held a palm-sized scanner to the chip set into the bracelet. “The event organizers have received feedback already and promise to supply better entrée warrants next year.”
“I should hope so,” snapped the Baroness Dejanac, rearranging her furs as if the night air offended her person. “My diamonds were kissed by Napoleon and zey think to offer me an eighteen-karat string? Why not just hand out Ring Pops next year? Then zey can save on hors d'oeuvres too, if zey are so cheap.”
Evidently they'd heard this from many of the guests, and would likely hear it from many more, as the guards' poker faces fell slightly on the side of weary. “Please enjoy your evening nonetheless, Baroness,” said the other guard with a dip of his head before glancing at the two men beside the Symkarian noble.
MJ spared Tony and Parker brief looks as if she believed her hired protectors were only to be seen, and never noticed. “My bodyguards,” she said dismissively. “As guardians go, zey are worth about eighteen karats themselves.”
One of the guards produced an iris scanner, which identified Tony and Parker as private contractors for an American security firm. After scrutinizing the readout, the guard grinned. “I see why you need two of them. You'd be better off hiring muscle from Sable International, your ladyship.”
“In Symkaria, I do,” she assured him. “Zere, death threats are inherited with ze estate. My thanks,” she added more magnanimously as the men bowed her inside, her grumpy guards trailing behind.
“Take the elevator to the penthouse,” the shaven-headed guard told Tony. He nodded gruffly and followed her ladyship. The heavy door clanged shut behind them.
Inside was a nondescript utility area, swept carefully clean but with junk propped artfully around on crates on either side of a lone, industrial elevator shaft. A lot of high-brow crap pretended to slum it like this, slapping beggarly touches on exclusive events.
Once safely out of the guards' earshot, Tony hissed at MJ. “Did you just pull all that from thin air?”
“Of course not. I was in Winterburg and Song of Sasha at the Rallery Theatre, back in the day,” said MJ, momentarily abandoning her accent. “Jedynak was Symkaria's answer to Anton Chekhov. Silver Sablanova gave me some vocal coaching herself, you know.”
“Have I mentioned lately how weird it is you two know each other?” Parker whined, pressing a button for the elevator. The doors slid open to reveal a spacious carriage lit by harsh, glaring light. Parker flicked what Tony assumed was one of his AnVoids—hopefully scaled back this time—into the elevator to deter potential listening devices.
Recalling the Black Cat, Tony asked sotto voce: “Sable? Don't tell me that's another ex.”
“No!” said Parker hotly.
“Be fair, Tiger,” said MJ as she glided in and swiveled to face forward. “You know she's always had a soft spot for you.”
The elevator lurched gently into motion. For such a seemingly utilitarian lift, it moved with a smoothness that suggested regular maintenance.
Tony was flabbergasted. Silver Sablanova? Sablanova? He'd met Silver Sablanova. If she'd ever had a soft spot she'd long since gouged it out with a machete, then filled the cavity with vibranium. Then shot the dentist. Tony did not even think she'd had baby teeth. She'd simply hatched from Symkaria in her final form, like a demonic kiwi.
“What is it with you and the—the privateers?” Tony demanded. “An art pirate and an actual pirate? Deadpool? Why do these people gravitate toward you?”
“Murphy's Law,” Parker said, peevishly. “And Sable's not a pirate...all the time.”
Come to think of it, Spider-Man had always attracted a legion of psychopaths and screwballs. Including one actually named Screwball. His rogue's gallery was more colorful and idiotic than anyone else's. Was it the Spider suit? Did they think he was one of them?
“How sure are you the Black Cat isn't playing you?” asked Tony, shaking his cuffs. He'd always doubted the kid's objectivity when it came to the thief he'd wanted so badly to reform. “She could be intentionally sending us on a merry chase for a painting she knows isn't here.”
“She never touched Raubkunst,” Parker insisted.
As he said it, though, Tony saw a previous life flash before Parker's eyes—one which recalled every time she'd lied to him before, and every time he'd fallen for it. For a second the kid looked panicked. This would be a line the Black Cat had never crossed before, she who'd traveled the no-man's-land between their ideaologies a million times, with a skip and a song.
It had meant something to Parker, after all, to carry on something of Captain America's legacy, once he'd learned the Oscorp spider had been an unpredictable attempt to replicate the infamous super-soldier serum. The power which Hitler had desperately wanted to claim for his Aryan zealots had instead reached its ultimate form in the person of a penniless Jewish kid from Queens. Even though he'd been bitten at random, even though his powers differed drastically from the old Commando's, Parker was conscious that the pursuit of Nazis was literally in his DNA.
For the first time Tony wondered whether Parker had ever told Cap that. Probably not; Parker didn't casually lift the corner on any part of his identity to the Avengers. It would have mattered to Rogers, though.
Surprisingly it was MJ who came to the Cat's defense. “Her father got his start robbing Nazis who'd escaped on the ratlines with all the art they'd stolen,” she said confidentially. Then she paused, fingers playing with her necklace, and sighed. “Well...but he did charge their original owners to get them back. So, not actually altruistic. But F—um, the Black Cat—drew the line at profiting from Raubkunst. She even threw Interpol some leads from time to time.”
Both men stared at her. Tony guessed Parker hadn't known all that. Then Tony shook his head. “I'm just gonna call her 'Ffff' from now on.”
“By the way,” said MJ, “Silver told me to keep an eye out for any Symkarian treasures that might end up here. Just in case. She uses this persona sometimes to place bids online.”
Apart from explaining why MJ could get away with a fake identity, this pointed to a frequent line of communication with the private army general that unnerved Tony. “So why doesn't she literally crash the party, if they traffic Symkarian stuff?” he asked. “She's got the grunts. If you take out the bazaar, you take out motivation to steal something to sell at the bazaar.”
“And drive the underground market further underground?” MJ said skeptically. “A lot of this stuff has been circulating for a while. They're easier to track this way.”
“The devil you know,” muttered Parker.
The kid was clearly uncomfortable with all the skullduggery. Despite Parker's relatively vanilla approach to missions, which including a respect for established doors Tony never had, his actual skulking was mostly limited to ventilation shafts. Stark had long since installed motion detectors in his own vents, and was regularly startled by the number of rats which managed to sneak into Stark Tower.
The elevator continued to rise. Mentally, Tony calculated they'd risen fifty stories.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Parker withdraw a hand from his pocket and minutely examine it. Nothing he saw appeared to worry him, and he slid it back into the jacket.
The elevator would slow soon. MJ fluffed up her furs, then elbowed Tony. He straightened his back and crossed his arms.
Parker folded his hands behind his back. MJ noticed. “That's Professor Pete,” she said lowly. “Give them Elite Pete.”
The kid's hands fluttered around uncertainly until he looked over at Tony, and crossed his arms too.
“We look like rental villains,” Tony complained, widening his stance. “Like the evil versions of mall Santas. These masks are so tragic.”
Parker grimaced. “I think they're modeled after Code Blitzen. Or, no, what's his name...the Gasteroid.”
“Who's that? Was that the one I threw down a sewer and then he tried to shoot a fireball at me from down there?” Stark couldn't keep villains' idiot stage names straight. They paraded through his recollection in an endless succession of stupid capes and multicolored onesies. The sewer guy at least was memorable for his spectacular and entirely self-inflicted stage exit from this mortal coil.
“No,” said Parker. “They're pro wrestlers.”
“How do you know so many pro wrestlers?” Stark demanded, twisting around to Parker. “Do you not see enough lunatics in tights already?”
“Where do you think I get my moves from?”
“Showtime, lads,” MJ said under her breath as the elevator drew to a stop.
The doors drew open to face baroque-looking wallpaper and another burly guard. Once again they were checked against the list, then waved through the short hallway toward the greater penthouse, which threw gently glittering light into the dim space around the elevator.
Through the rectangular opening they could see elegantly-dressed people drifting past like aimless pheasants, and hear the clinking of martini glasses. Piano music floated around from somewhere.
Before the open space stood a mobile gateway, manned by two more guards. The air in the middle of the gateway shimmered an iridescent blue.
The so-called baroness surrendered the burner phone Tony had supplied her with, and both he and Parker turned over their (fake) stun guns and submitted to a body search. Knives were forbidden, but MJ had confided the hairpin she wore had been a gift from Silver Sablanova, and could (and knowing Sable, definitely would) double as a stiletto. Parker would never let a fight reach her, but maybe he felt better knowing she had at least something to wield.
The security mesh detected no further electronics on their person. After they cleared security, they approached the glimmering rectangle of golden light.
Entranced, they drifted to a stop at the entrance.
After a moment Tony said lowly, “Well. Beats the hell out of any party I ever threw.”
“Tony, you only ever threw ragers.”
Already the party was in swing. Women paraded slowly in sparkling gowns, diamonds dripping like rain from their ears, necks, and tucked into their hair. The men wore designer evening suits. The floor was gleaming, golden wood, and every piece of furniture a beautifully maintained antique. It was like they'd wandered onto the Titanic. The invitees were barefaced, but Tony and Parker weren't the only ones with domino masks. Bodyguards and staff trailed around like children, all wearing face coverings which actually worked to make them indistinct against their glamorous charges.
In one corner of the next room, a small orchestra was setting up. Each of them wore tight head coverings of thin, gray silk, which added an attractively spooky edge of menace, incongruous as it was against the Christmas-appropriate gold tinsel and fresh green boughs laden with Swarovski ornaments.
People wandered through the penthouse chambers in a kind of perpetual procession. The area the main entrance had deposited them into seemed to be the bar. Suited bartenders, also wearing the breathable silk masks, poured handmade cocktails into crystal glasses, taken delicately by the attendees or loaded onto gold platters that servers maneuvered with astonishing dexterity through the crowd.
Now this was a millionaires' assembly. It was the ostentatious kind of thing Tony would have expected from the dime novels his father had sneakily read when Tony was a kid.
“This is kind of gross, on Christmas Eve,” murmured MJ. “I'm volunteering us for extra F.E.A.S.T. shifts after this, Tiger.”
Tony saw Parker smile a little.
Whatever disdain MJ felt felt for this distinctly uncharitable event she didn't betray as she handed her fur coat to the coatcheck woman, then glided over to the bar and ordered a martini. As the hired muscle, Tony refrained. It was possibly the only party he'd abstained at. At least until Morgan got old enough to attend the Stark Industries holiday party.
Masked security guards were stationed at strategic points around the chambers. Being an electronic dead zone, their weapons were primarily batons and stun guns. So far as the Black Cat knew, the Hangman's Bazaar had never needed to live up to its name. Order was observed here as part of a code, the kind kept by rapscallions of a certain tier.
Like someone accustomed to their shadow, the Baroness Dejanac did not beckon her bodyguards to follow her through the next space, where the orchestra was setting up and presumably people would dance, but simply strode forward and expected them to trail behind.
Parker was trying not to stare. Tony had been to high-brow stuff like this in his youth, when Stark Sr. still ran the show, but the brow had decidedly lowered in the years since. It was still familiar enough to bore him after the flashy first imprint. He kept himself occupied scanning the rooms, while playing his part as the watchful guard.
The auction would start soon. According to Ffff, the name he now attributed to the Black Cat, each year's offerings were kept famously secret until the moment of their reveal at the Bazaar.
They wandered through the chambers. Here and there, the false Baroness Dejanac was hailed by attendees she had dealt with online through prior bazaars, but never met. MJ had done her character research, clearly, able to respond and converse in her Symkarian accent without giving anything away. At times she threw her hovering bodyguards an imperious look, directing them to a discreet distance, away from eavesdropping on her important conversational companions. The necklace glimmered against her collarbone.
The old Parker would have never gone to his wife for help, Tony reflected.
“I'm surprised you're even here without a suit,” he told the kid lowly as they stood against the wall.
“Same here,” said Parker laconically. “I kind of figured you'd have built an undetectable hologram projector. Or EMP-resistant suit.”
Tony had. “My closet's a lot smaller than it used to be.”
“Why's that?”
“I'm retired.” The last Mark suit Tony had made was for one of the new Avengers. Aside from upkeep, changing the oil and whatnot, he'd barely touched the last one he'd made for himself, several years before, which he didn't have on now.
“Did you torch them again?” asked Parker.
Tony paused. The kid was watching him carefully, from the corner of one masked eye. That Tony had once demolished all his Iron Man suits was an open secret among the Avengers and their associates. None of them had really asked him about it. “Most of them,” he said honestly. Then—he didn't know why he suddenly admitted it—he added: “I've got two left.”
“That is a smaller closet,” said Parker. “Those outfits had better be for all occasions.”
Tony had never had one suit for all occasions. That's why he'd made so many.
What he didn't say was that the armor he wore now he'd never used before, though it was nearly a decade old. He only wore it tonight because of the two suits that remained to him, it was the only one which was both EMP-proof and could bypass the security electrical net without giving itself away.
It was also incomplete. It wasn't even a suit. He'd abandoned work on it before fitting the system into a definable Iron Man shell, so he wore it now as a skeletal system of connected, hair-thin wires that threaded beneath his evening suit and culminated in points at his wrists, stylish hipster bands to the naked eye, which could suddenly expand into nano-assisted tech. One braid of wires threaded into a small port which sat directly on his spine, tapped into his central nervous system.
Neuroanatomy had been more Parker's specialty. Tony hadn't had the energy or the will to complete this suit, or fix its many flaws, and he wore it now hoping he wouldn't need it.
Why hadn't he destroyed it with the rest? He'd wondered, many times.
If he did need it, at least, it was different enough from the Mark armors that it probably wouldn't be identified as Stark tech, drawing attention to the company he kept.
“My dear, I think they're starting,” said one gentleman, looking over his shoulder. He offered his arm to MJ and she took it, beckoning Tony and Parker with a look.
The congregation of nefarious socialites filtering into the last, largest room reminded Tony of a scene from a nature documentary Pepper had watched once, where different predators had mingled at the watering hole, assessing the prey and each other to see what was on offer. Instead of the rows of chairs he might have expected, polished pedestal tables of dark, glossy wood spotted the floor, reaching elbow height of the guests.
An employee handed MJ a bidding paddle. It was also an antique; the card was framed by gilt flowers and sat on a long, solid handle like a Victorian hand-held mirror.
MJ sat her martini glass on a table near the back. Tony and Parker took up unobstrusive positions behind her. All three fixed their eyes on the simple stage up front. So did the rest of the room. An anticipatory hush fell, and Tony was taken aback by the display of reverence in this place.
As they watched, two more men in masks carefully brought out what looked like an ancient Grecian vase from a door in the corner. An unmasked man took his place on the stage, moving to a small podium and surveying the masked workers placing the antique on a pedestal.
Any corporate event would have suffered through an agonizing opening monologue, full of tired jokes and rote nods of appreciation to the hosts. Not the Hangman's Bazaar. The auctioneer smiled thinly at the room.
Tony realized with a start that he'd seen the man before.
He turned to Parker and saw the recognition there too. “Martin Koppelman?” the kid breathed.
Together they stared at him, short and slight in his nondescript suit. The Met conservator? What in hell was he doing here?
“An aryballos vase, originating from Corinth, estimated between 700-650 B.C.E.,” said Koppelman blandly. His balding head shone beneath the light. Lit harshly, the podium appeared a stage in a darkened theater. “Its presumed use was as a perfume oil dispenser.” There was a hush as the crowd scrutinized the small vase, then the bidding began.
Bidding for the vase, which Pepper would have liked, escalated at astonishing speed. “Think I can get MJ to place a bet?” he whispered to Parker.
“If you want to explain to Sable why you squandered the funds she forwarded to MJ,” Parker muttered back.
“I'm good for it,” grumbled Tony. But he did not much want to explain anything to Sable.
The Hangman's Bazaar had some mysteriously direct pipelines. After the aryballos vase came a small Picasso painting, an early piece whose departure in style Tony wouldn't have expected, and then a thousand-year-old jewelry box, also Greek. Somebody had held Corinth by the ankles and shook all the goods from its pockets. Tony could have knocked out ten years of Christmas shopping for Pepper here, although she probably would have done the boringly nice thing with them and donated them to museums.
Throughout the auction, Koppelman presented each treasure with a dry, slightly ironic tone. It was unlike any auction Tony knew of; instead of moderating the bids, Koppelman simply allowed them to pile atop one another, a smile which did not reach his eyes propelling the bids ever higher.
Then they brought up a small, shimmering object which, at Tony's distance, looked like a Bedazzled egg. Tony frowned at Koppelman. There could be some perfectly rational explanation for his presence, but if that Botticelli was here, that was a level of coincidence beyond the absurd.
“One jeweled egg, commissioned by King Alexander, father to King Petrio of Symkaria, from Gustav Fabergé in 1847," he intoned. "It was one of the last known Fabregé designs under the tenure of the firm's founder.”
Tony glanced at MJ. While her chin raised, her hand did not. Instead she allowed the bids to rise until the astronomical price began to dwindle, then placed a bid—high enough that Parker went white—of her own in a voice that asserted her ownership over the Symkarian treasure, whatever the cost. Several attendees shot her slightly intimidated looks. A few more feeble bids followed, but MJ commanded the bid with an authority which cowed everyone else.
“Sold,” Koppelman said quietly. MJ haughtily gestured for Tony to go and collect her treasure. The enameled, bejeweled egg was swiftly bundled into a heavily cushioned, silk-padded box which looked to be a Fabregé antique itself, painted and gleaming. The box itself was then wrapped in incongruously plain butcher's paper and tied with a string. The funds must have already cleared, because they handed it to him without reservation.
Clutching the box, Tony made his way to MJ's side. So did Parker. Now that they were guarding both her person and her treasure, the Baroness Dejanac suffered their proximity with more grace.
“I hope you didn't blow Sablanova's budget,” Tony said almost silently.
“Business is good,” she replied near as quietly, though without dropping the accent.
Parker must have already clued her in about Martin Koppelman, because her gaze sharpened on the man.
Everything proceeded smoothly for a while. Tony made mental tallies of the items he figured he should drop a line to Everett Ross about. After a small Japanese carving was bundled off to its new owner, the masked employees brought a midsize painting, about two feet across, and drew away the covering sheet.
Koppelman gave the briefest hesitation. “Sandro Botticelli, oil on panel depiction of the death of Pallas, daughter of the Roman god Triton.” He appeared to rouse himself, and said with more emphasis: “Its origin is estimated in the 1470s.”
A single breath swept the audience. Tony stared hard at the oil painting, which stood as a vibrant spot of color against the gilded green wallpaper. All eyes were fixed on the panel.
It was not the same Botticelli.
“I don't recognize that one,” said MJ, her lips barely moving. Almost comically, her Symkarian inflections remained intact. “That one's new.”
The Botticelli stolen from the Met had been a portrait of Athena, resplendent in her armored glory.
“Another mystery Botticelli?” Parker whispered in disbelief as the audience members, once awoken from their trances, began placing bids that started out shocking and climbed to numbers which almost seemed unreal.
Tony watched Koppelman, who waited placidly with hands folded before him. His dark eyes tracked the bidders from behind his black-rimmed glasses.
The crowd grew excited as the numbers soared. The spell broken, the bidding became something of a spectator's sport, each new sum ellicting comment and cheers.
So animated did the auction become that only the three infiltrators seemed to hear the crash.
They looked at each other, hyperaware the noise hadn't belonged to the fuss but uncertain of its origins.
Another tinkling crash, and surprised shouts. Tony looked around the room. So did a couple other bodyguards.
Then the unmistakable sound of a shattering chandelier turned everyone's heads toward one room flanking the side, closer to the bar, though more startling was the loud, ringing cackle which accompanied it.
Tony had heard maniacal laughter lots of times. Way, way too many times, from way, way too many idiots. This was different. This wasn't madness—quite. This was abject glee. This was a toddler kicking the Legos.
The glittering crowd drew back from the entrance. Personal security edged forward. Tony saw Parker glance nervously at MJ.
On stage, Koppelman frowned in the direction of the noise, wary. His hands tightened.
Tony heard the twanging of string as somebody threw a viola at somebody else. “I love a good concerto!” an unseen man's voice rang out shrilly, the one who'd laughed. “Play 'MmBop!'”
Past the entrance to the next chamber, Tony saw a chair fly and break against the patterned wall. One of the orchestra members, head wreathed in gray silk, rushed to stand framed in the entrance, arms spread wide as if to embrace the bedlam. Somewhere he'd gotten hold of a conductor's baton and brought it sweeping down. “Play 'Freebird!'” the madman demanded.
“Does he not know he's part of the orchestra?” a wag asked from behind Tony.
To Tony's surprise, Parker blanched.
“Oh God,” the kid wailed, pressing his palms over his eyes. “No. No. No, no no.”
Nonplussed, Tony stared between him and and the chaos. So did MJ, until she scrutinized the human hurricane gleefully wreaking absolute havoc, maneuvering ever closer to the auction chamber, and brought her gloved hands to her mouth.
“Oh Lord,” she echoed, awed. Then she whirled to Parker and grabbed his arm in a white-knuckled grip.
“He doesn't know who Webs is! You can not reveal yourself,” MJ hissed fiercely. The accent was gone. “If he finds out who you are, he is going to text you fifty memes a day. Pete, I'm not having him black out on our couch on the weekends, do you hear me?”
Parker appeared closer to having a panic attack than Tony had ever seen. “Do either of you plan on enlightening me?” Tony demanded in a hoarse whisper.
From the depths of the hands clamped over his face, he heard the kid moan, “It's Deadpool.”
.
.
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