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“Keep up, Crewcut. If we lose track of each other, there’s no telling what might happen to you.”
As Barry quickened his pace, he couldn’t help but marvel at the utterly bizarre turn his life had taken. When he had been sent to prison after his new lab assistant had framed him for a crime he hadn’t committed, he had been expecting a thoroughly miserable experience. Being sent to prison wouldn’t be a walk in the park for anyone, but he had been convicted of tampering with evidence on behalf of Central City’s most powerful drug baron, and for selling his drugs out of the back of the police department’s own laboratory. And when it came to crimes that would make you unpopular with inmates and prison guards alike, being a corrupt cop was close to the top of the list.
He hadn’t expected that he would end up being cellmates with the Weather Wizard, and he definitely hadn’t expected that the supervillain he had put behind bars as the Flash would end up offering to protect him as Barry Allen, falsely accused prisoner.
“I’m coming. Believe me, getting shanked isn’t high on my bucket list,” he said. Quite the opposite, in fact.
After a few more minutes of walking, they arrived at what Barry Allen assumed had to be the prison cafeteria, given how much it resembled the lunch room he remembered from his high school days—-only larger, and even less clean.
“Don’t worry, Crewcut. The food isn’t as bad as you’ve heard—it’s worse,” the Weather Wizard said as they joined the long lunch line.
Barry was missing Iris’ veal scallopini already.
Iris . How was she doing? Was she all right? Was anyone giving her a hard time for being married to someone they believed to be a corrupt cop on the Candy Man’s payroll?
“Get a move on, copper!”
Barry felt a hard shove, stumbled forward, and nearly fell. Only years of dodging everything from absolute zero beams to boomerangs to lightning kept him on his feet. He could hear laughter behind him. He turned around to face a tall, muscular man, who was flanked on either side by two slightly smaller men, one of whom was bald and the other of whom had a shock of red hair.
“Excuse me. That was uncalled for,” he said.
“Shoulda gotten your head outta the clouds before you held up the line, copper. Nobody makes Dangerous Dennis wait for anything,” the largest man said.
Before Barry could start wondering why all the criminals in Central City were so obsessed with alliterative names, the Weather Wizard turned around and almost casually started walking towards Dangerous Dennis and his two cronies.
“ Nobody ? I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
Dangerous Dennis backed up a few steps.
“You…you know this guy?” he asked. The Weather Wizard nodded.
“He’s my cellmate. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave him alone,” he said.
“What’s he to you, Wizard? Don’t you know he’s a cop?” Dangerous Dennis protested.
“I know that if I catch you three bothering him again, any problems you have now will seem like a storm in a teacup,” Weather Wizard replied. Dangerous Dennis’ bald crony snorted.
“And that’s supposed to scare us? Everybody knows you ain’t nothin’ without your wand—and you ain’t got that in here,” he said. Dangerous Dennis smacked him.
“Shut up, Muscles Mike!” Then he turned back to the Weather Wizard.
“Look, if it really means so much to you, then fine. We’ll leave the copper alone.”
“Good. And make sure it gets around that Barry Allen is under the Weather Wizard’s protection.”
The rest of the trip through the lunch line passed uneventfully, although Barry did gag a little when the mysterious “breakfast casserole” was dumped unceremoniously onto his tray. He had no idea what was in it, but it looked a whole lot more like old socks and cardboard than it did like anything that might be edible.
At least the carton of milk and cup of applesauce looked safe.
“I guess I’ve had worse breakfasts,” he muttered as the Weather Wizard led him to a surprisingly empty table.
Once they were both seated, the Weather Wizard turned to him with a slightly frustrated expression.
“Look, Crewcut, you can’t go around picking fights like that.”
“What do you mean, picking fights? He shoved me ,” Barry protested.
“And you reacted by scolding him instead of punching him in the eye. Unless you’ve got the power to back up your smart mouth, people will use backtalk as an excuse to jump you—and while most crooks in here are smart enough to know not to cross me, that might not stop some guys from taking their chances with you if I’m not physically there to stop them,” Weather Wizard replied.
The irony, of course, was that, as the Flash, Barry had more than enough power to fight off anyone in here—but since using his super speed would give away his secret identity to a prison’s worth of dangerous criminals, he couldn’t use that power, not even to protect himself.
“What should I do, then? Let them push me around?” Barry asked.
“I don’t think it’ll happen too often once word gets around that you’re under my protection—but if it does, yeah, you should let them push you around. It bites, but being humiliated is better than being dead. Take it from someone who knows.” Barry raised an eyebrow.
“What do you mean?”
“When I got arrested the second time, they sent me to prison because the jail was super overcrowded. I was pretty much left alone for the first two weeks, since my family is from Guatemala and everyone who looked at me assumed that I was, like, part of a cartel or something, but then some actual cartel guys were sent to prison after a big drug bust, and they made it pretty clear to everyone that I wasn’t with them just because I had dark hair and could speak Spanish.”
“You can speak Spanish?” Barry had fought the Weather Wizard for years as the Flash, and he hadn’t heard the man speak Spanish once.
“ Sí, puedo hablar español. Simplemente no lo hago mucho, ya que hay muchos chicos en mi línea de trabajo a quienes no les gustan los hispanos. Es mejor dejarles pensar que soy de ascendencia italiana y evitar tener que luchar constantemente contra ataques de matones que quieren que "vuelva a Brasil" o lo que sea ,” Weather Wizard replied. Barry wasn’t fluent in Spanish by any means, but after taking four years of studying the language in college, he was able to get the gist of what the other man had said.
“Most people in Brazil speak Portuguese, not Spanish,” Barry said. The Weather Wizard laughed bitterly.
“ You know that, and I know that, but trust me—- the thugs who go after people for being Hispanic don’t know that. Nor do they care,” he replied.
“Would I be right to assume you’re speaking from personal experience?”
“Unfortunately. Two days after the cartel guy made it clear that I wasn’t under their protection, I got cornered by five guys who were part of a skinhead gang. They told me to “go back to Brazil”, among other things that I’d really rather not repeat. When I made the mistake of pointing out to them that I was from Guatemala, actually, they all jumped me. I tried to fight back, but since there were five of them and one of me and I was a skinny klutz, they overpowered me in about three seconds, then beat me to within an inch of my life. It was so bad they actually had to send me to the hospital, and after I came to, the doctors told Clyde and me that if I had gotten to the hospital ten minutes later, I would have died.”
Barry wasn’t sure what was more surprising to him—the fact that the Weather Wizard had continued to commit crimes even after he had nearly been killed in jail, or the fact that he was sharing such a personal story with a man he barely knew.
“What happened to the men who almost killed you?” he asked.
“Nothing. The last thing they said to me before one of them kicked me in the head and knocked me out was that if I named any names, things would be worse for me the next time. So I kept my mouth shut. I’d already almost died once, and that was for something that was out of my control. If I got a reputation as being a stool pigeon, too, I would’ve been buying my own tombstone,” Weather Wizard replied.
“Did they ever go after you again?”
“Once, but I—this is so embarrassing—”
“Trust me, I’m not planning on telling anyone. Your reputation as the Weather Wizard might be the only thing that will keep what happened to you from happening to me,” Barry said. True, he could probably subtly use his powers enough to avoid being killed outright, but he would much rather avoid being jumped altogether if he could help it.
“Yeah, I guess you probably have all the motivation you’d ever need to not go spreading this story around. Anyway, the next time they went after me, I—um—I begged them for mercy. One of them thought it was pathetic enough to be funny, so they let me off with a split lip and a sprained wrist. They probably would’ve gone after me again at some point, but Clyde raised enough of a fuss over my being sent to prison to serve out a jail term for petty theft, and then almost getting killed because of it, that I got transferred out of state prison before they could.”
“Your brother must have cared about you a lot.”
“He did. He shouldn’t have—-I never did anything good for him—but he did. Because he—he was like you. All kind and noble and upstanding. If he hadn’t been, he never would have bothered to help someone so stupid and worthless and pathetic.” Barry looked at the Weather Wizard in surprise. After years of fighting him as the Flash, Barry was used to the Weather Wizard being loud, arrogant, and boastful; crowing about his incredible powers, how unstoppable he was, and, during a rather memorable argument that he’d had with Captain Cold during one of the annual Rogues’ Gallery Conventions, about how good he was with the ladies. It was very strange to suddenly hear him talking about himself so negatively.
“That’s how you see yourself? As worthless?”
“Not anymore. I’m the Weather Wizard now. I can whip up tornadoes and control lightning and bend the elements to my will. I’m the most powerful person in the Twin Cities! I’m famous, and important, and better than that, I’m finally special—just like Clyde used to be.”
“Hey, Mick! Get over here quick! Mark’s blowing up a lot of hot air again!” a new, but familiar, voice suddenly exclaimed. Barry looked up to see that a blonde man with the face of a choirboy had arrived at his cafeteria table.
“Shut up, James. You’re just jealous that I’m a much better supervillain than you,” the Weather Wizard replied, confirming what Barry had already been suspecting—that the new arrival was none other than that Harlequin of Hocus-pocus himself. The Trickster. The Trickster giggled.
“If by “better” you mean “luckier”, I can’t argue with that. After all, it’s not exactly a big secret that you only became a supervillain because your brother’s wand fell into your lap,” he said as he sat down across from the Weather Wizard. The Weather Wizard scowled, and if Barry hadn’t known better, he would have sworn that the man’s eyes started sparking with electricity.
“Don’t you talk about my brother!”
“C’mon, James. Don’t rile up Mark like that. You know how moody he is,” an enormous bald man said as he arrived at the table and sat down on Barry’s left. From the sound of his voice, his familiarity with both the Weather Wizard and the Trickster, and the fact that he stood at least six and a half feet tall, Barry was almost positive that he was Heat Wave.
“But riling him up is so much fun!”
Then both Trickster and Heat Wave seemed to notice Barry at once.
“Who are you ?” they asked in unison.
“My name is Barry Allen, and—”
“He’s my new cellmate. I like him, so he’s under my protection,” the Weather Wizard interrupted. Mick grinned and extended his hand to Barry.
“Any friend of Mark’s is a friend of mine. My name’s Mick Rory. It’s nice to meet you,” he said cheerfully. Barry awkwardly took the proffered hand and shook it, trying not to think about how surreal it was that the Flash was shaking hands with Heat Wave.
“You probably know him better as Heat Wave,” Weather Wizard explained.
“And my name is Wil E. Coyote, Su-per Ge-ni-us. But you can call me the Trickster.” The smile on the Trickster’s face was so wide that Barry wasn’t quite sure how it wasn’t hurting his face.
“His real name is James Jesse,” Weather Wizard said.
“Actually, my real name is Giovanni Giuseppi. But I like Wil E. Coyote better,” the Trickster replied.
“So, what are you in for?” Heat Wave asked.
“Don’t you watch the news? If he’s Barry Allen, then he’s in for taking bribes, falsifying evidence, and dealing dope out of the back of the laboratory at police headquarters. The D. A. wanted to send him up the river for at least thirty years, but the judge decided to be nice because he was a first-timer, so he got a decade instead,” the Trickster said.
“But he looks like such a nice guy,” Heat Wave said. The Trickster laughed.
“I’m the world’s greatest conman, and I have the angelic features of a fifteen-year-old choirboy. Looks can be deceiving. And besides, if you want to hide the fact that you’re screwing everyone else over, there’s no better way to do that than to look like a nice guy. If he didn’t look that way, he wouldn’t have gotten away with it for so long.”
“Is that true?” Heat Wave asked. For a career criminal, he certainly sounded horrified by the notion that Barry might have disguised his true nature under a mask of nobility.
“Of course not. He’s innocent. Just like Mark, and me, and you, and everybody else in here. Isn’t that right, Allen?”
“But I’m not innocent,” Heat Wave said, apparently completely bewildered by the sarcasm of his criminal cohort. The Trickster ignored his protest.
“Well? Are you innocent, or aren’t you?”
“I am innocent. I was framed,” Barry said after a long moment. He was sure that the Trickster would immediately laugh his claim off as a pack of lies, but he wasn’t going to confess to a crime that he hadn’t committed.
“ Really ? That’s awful!” Heat Wave exclaimed. The Trickster rolled his eyes.
“If he’s guilty, he’s a crooked cop. Of course he’s going to say he’s innocent.”
“But he could be.” The Trickster laughed again.
“Mick, a quarter of the guys in here say they were framed—and most of them are as guilty as sin. There’s no reason to assume Mark’s new cellmate is any different.”
“But he is!” the Weather Wizard suddenly exclaimed. The Trickster gave him a funny look.
“Wait. You think he’s innocent?”
“I do. If he wasn’t, he would’ve known better than to tell me he was in for being a corrupt cop before the word could spread around that that was what he was.”
“Mark, he’s in for being on the Candy Man’s payroll—and the Candy Man always makes sure that nothing too bad happens to anyone on his take. He doesn't have as much to be afraid of in here as your average crooked cop. And who knows, he could just be so used to getting away with his crimes that he thinks he’s invincible. I’ve seen that before,” the Trickster replied.
“Maybe…but all the same, I really do think he’s innocent. He has that same sort of earnest naivete about him that my brother had, and I know my brother would never have committed a crime, let alone one as bad as he’s supposed to be in for,” the Weather Wizard replied.
“ That’s your argument for him being innocent? The fact that he makes you think of your dead brother?” The Trickster asked incredulously.
“It’s why I’m protecting him—for my brother’s sake.”
“But he’s a corrupt cop!”
“Wait. I thought he was innocent,” Heat Wave said, sounding very confused.
“He’s not. Mark just thinks he is because he happened to meet him on the anniversary of his brother’s death, and because he can’t think rationally where anything that reminds him of his brother is concerned,” the Trickster replied.
“How do you know that he’s guilty? It’s not impossible that the cops got the wrong guy,” the Weather Wizard shot back.
“Because he’s the perfect corrupt cop! If you want to hire someone to get you and your men off the hook for your crimes, you aren’t going to go for the rough-around-the-edges beat cop who most people think is basically a thug anyway. You’re going to go for the nice, polite, clean-cut police scientist. And besides, unlike you, I watched his trial. I heard the case against him, and it seemed pretty solid to me. His alibis were terrible —even by Mick’s standards.”
“I thought my alibi last time was pretty good,” Heat Wave said.
Heat Wave’s last alibi had been that he was watching a movie that hadn’t come out yet. If the Trickster thought Barry’s alibis were worse than that, it really said something about his utter inability to lie convincingly.
Maybe Iris had been right when she had said that it was a minor miracle that he hadn’t accidentally revealed his secret identity to the world long ago.
“But he’s not like us, James. He’s like my brother. He’s good,” the Weather Wizard insisted. The Trickster rolled his eyes.
“If you really want to adopt him as a substitute older brother, you can just do that. You don’t have to lie to yourself and pretend he’s innocent, too.”
“Well, he could be,” Heat Wave said again.
“Yeah, and I could secretly be an FBI agent who’s gathering information on all of you. Almost anything’s possible, but not all possible things are equally probable.” Barry suddenly found himself imaging the Trickster as an FBI agent. The thought was deeply unsettling.
“You’re making my head hurt,” Heat Wave mumbled.
“You can think he’s guilty all you want. He reminds me of Clyde, and I’m going to protect him,” the Weather Wizard said. The Trickster shrugged.
“Suit yourself.”
Five minutes later, Barry was choking down milk that sure seemed as though it might be spoiled, the Weather Wizard was absently stirring his applesauce as he talked about how he wouldn’t mind going to see the movie in the prison’s rec room on Friday since it was supposed to star Daphne Dean, Heat Wave was devouring his serving of the alleged “breakfast casserole”, and the Trickster was playing with a rubbery omelet.
“Are you gonna eat that?” Heat Wave suddenly asked him.
“Eat what?”
“Your breakfast casserole. ‘Cause I’ll eat it if you don’t want it,” Heat Wave replied. Barry poked the mysterious substance with his fork. It jiggled in an unsettling way, and he decided that, while he might be able to choke down probably-spoiled milk, he did not have the stomach to eat something that moved in a way that suggested it might have brain waves.
“It’s all yours,” he said as he placed the paper plate full of foulness onto Mick’s tray. Mick grinned.
“Thanks!”
“Smart choice. I don’t even want to know what kinds of preservatives they put in the prison’s mystery meat,” a slender young man with long red hair said as he sat down on the Trickster’s left. Judging from the young man’s appearance, which was all too familiar to Barry from both police files and personal experience, the new arrival had to be the Pied Piper.
“Piper, look! I have a new friend!” the Trickster exclaimed as he waved the rubbery omelet in the other man’s general direction. The Pied Piper looked ill at the very sight of it.
“James, this is not middle school. I don’t need to see your breakfast, no matter how hilarious you think disgusting food is.” The Trickster didn’t seem perturbed.
“‘Hi, Piper! I’m the Rubber Egg Monster, and I’m going to give you a big hug!’” he said in a ridiculous voice.
“Knock it off, James!” the Pied Piper shrieked as the Trickster moved the rubbery omelet closer to him.
“You don’t want a hug from the Rubber Egg Monster?” the Trickster asked as he waved the omelet in the other man’s face.
“I said knock it off!” The Trickster pulled the omelet back a bit.
“You’re going to hurt Rubber Egg Monster’s feelings,” he pouted.
“Seeing as the Rubber Egg Monster isn’t real, you’ll forgive me if I’m not overly concerned about his emotional state,” the Pied Piper replied icily. The Trickster seemed to decide that he’d pushed his luck far enough, and dropped the rubbery omelet back onto his tray.
“The Rubber Egg Monster isn’t our only new friend,” he said, gesturing in Barry’s direction.
“I noticed. Who’s he?” the Pied Piper asked.
“My name is—”
“He’s my new cellmate, Barry Allen. I’ve put him under my protection, because—”
“Because Mark’s decided that he’s his new substitute older brother or something,” the Trickster interrupted.
“He seems nice,” Heat Wave added. The Pied Piper frowned.
“Barry Allen? As in the police scientist who was just convicted for dealing drugs and tampering with evidence on the behalf of Jack Monteleone?” he asked.
“Yes. But I’m—”
“He says that he was framed. I’m sure it’s nothing but a pack of lies—you heard how awful his alibis were—but because Mark’s brother died five years ago yesterday, and our police scientist friend reminds him of his brother somehow, Mark actually believes him.”
“Well, he could be telling the truth. Maybe he really was framed,” Mick said.
“And of course, Mick believes anything you tell him, so he thinks Allen might be innocent, too.”
“I do not!” Heat Wave protested. The Pied Piper turned to Barry with a curious look on his face.
“You say you were framed? By who?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter who he says it was—because he’s guilty. Just like you, and me, and everyone else in here.”
“I’m asking Allen, not you, James,” the Pied Piper replied firmly.
“Yes, I was framed—-by my brilliant new assistant in the police laboratory. His name is Carl Anderson, and, while I can’t say why he framed me, I know it had to have been him, because he was the one who first accused me of being on the Candy Man’s payroll—and because, as a police scientist himself, he’s the only person who could have planted evidence on me well enough to fool Patty Spivot,” Barry explained. The Pied Piper’s eyes went wide.
“You are telling the truth,” he said quietly.
“Come on, Piper. Don’t tell me you’re going to fall for that sort of sob story!” the Trickster exclaimed.
“His story didn’t convince me. His heart rate did,” the Pied Piper replied.
“My…. heart rate?” Barry asked.
“Yes. I have hyper-advanced nanomechanical ears that allow me to hear people’s heartbeats—and thus, detect heart rates. Your heart rate wasn’t elevated at all when you were claiming innocence, which suggests that you were telling the truth.”
“A normal heart rate doesn’t suggest that he wasn’t lying, Piper. It just suggests that he wasn’t nervous about it. And if he’s been pretending to be an upstanding citizen—a cop , no less–while working for the Candy Man, he’d have to be pretty good at lying.”
“If he’s good enough at lying to fool the entire world—-and my ears–-why were his alibis during his trial so terrible?” Pied Piper asked.
“Because he knew he didn’t have a good alibi. Even a good liar can only do so much in the face of obvious proof,” the Trickster replied.
“But the prosecution never conclusively proved that he was at the scene of any of the supposed crimes. They only proved that his whereabouts weren’t properly accounted for at the time the crimes were taking place.”
“But if he was innocent, then why didn’t he just say where he really was? Why lie about it—badly, I might add—-and make himself look guilty?”
“Maybe he’s the Flash,” Heat Wave suggested suddenly.
“ What ?” Barry, Weather Wizard, Trickster, and Pied Piper asked in unison.
“Well, if he was off doing superhero stuff at the time of the crimes, then he couldn’t tell anyone that that was where he was, because it would give away his secret identity. So he would have had to have lied about it. And I’ve always thought Flash was a cop. He smells like one,” Heat Wave said.
“We’ve been over this, Heat Wave. The Flash is not a cop. Why would he bother with a secret identity if he was one?” the Weather Wizard said.
“I’ve always thought Roscoe’s idea that he’s a journalist is a good one. It would help explain how he always knows about prison escapes and big current events and stuff,” the Trickster said.
“I don’t know. I still think my D.A. theory makes the most sense,” the Weather Wizard said.
“But we know what the D.A. looks like. The Flash isn’t that fat,” Heat Wave protested.
“If the Mirror Master can disguise himself as a cowboy and the Flash and who knows what else, why can’t the Flash use similar tech to make himself look different in his civilian identity?” the Weather Wizard asked.
“I doubt the Flash would go through that much effort just to throw people off his scent—though I guess it’s at least more probable than Turtle Man’s ‘he’s a robot’ theory,” the Trickster said.
“When did you talk to the Turtle Man?” the Weather Wizard asked.
“A couple of months ago. We got assigned to work in the kitchen together, so I struck up a conversation with him out of boredom, and at some point he mentioned that he thinks the Flash is a robot,” the Trickster explained.
“No way is the Flash a robot. Robots are made of metal. I’ve been punched by the Flash before, and he’s definitely not made of metal,” Heat Wave said.
At this point, the Pied Piper stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly.
“Weren’t we trying to decide whether or not Allen was framed?” he asked once his criminal cohorts turned to look at him.
“I don’t think he was. Unless he’s the Flash—and I think we can both agree that he’s not—there’s no good reason for him to have lied about his location at the time of the crimes if he wasn’t guilty.”
“But that doesn’t explain why his alibi lies were so terrible. If he’s as good a liar as you seem to think he is—good enough that he doesn’t get nervous while lying to supervillains —why was he so bad at coming up with excuses for where he was?”
“Allen’s a very good liar. He’s good enough that he managed to fool the Twin Cities and the CCPD for a long time, and he’s practiced enough that lying about being framed doesn’t cause his heart to beat faster—-but like I said earlier, even the best liar in the world can’t do much in the face of obvious proof. I don’t know exactly why his alibis were as bad as they were—maybe on some level he realized that no alibi would be enough to explain away the other evidence against him, or maybe he was so used to getting away with everything that he thought he could get away with even flimsy alibis at his trial—but it’s not because he was innocent.”
When, Barry wondered, had his Rogues become jailhouse lawyers?
“Are you sure that there’s no other possible reason that he could have lied about his whereabouts, other than being guilty?” the Pied Piper asked.
“Plenty of possible reasons, but no likely ones. But hey, if the three of you want to believe he’s innocent, go ahead. It’ll be good for a laugh when you finally figure it out,” the Trickster said. With that, he picked up his straw, pulled the straw out of the wrapper, and then blew the wrapper in the Weather Wizard’s general direction. This accomplished, he grabbed Heat Wave and Pied Piper’s milk cartons and started juggling them alongside his own.
“How’d you learn to do that, James?” Heat Wave asked, sounding amazed—and Barry had to admit, the Trickster’s juggling really was impressive.
“The same way you get to Carnegie Hall,” the Trickster replied cheerfully. Heat Wave frowned.
“What’s a building got to do with juggling?” he asked.
“It’s an old joke, Mick. Someone asks someone how they get to Carnegie Hall—where they hold classical concerts—-and the person they’re talking to says “practice”, since you’d need to practice a lot to be good enough to play in Carnegie Hall. James is saying that he’s good at juggling because he practiced a lot at it,” the Pied Piper explained.
“Then why didn’t he just say that?” The Piper shook his head.
“Because he enjoys messing with people.”
A few minutes later, Heat Wave had finished his breakfast casserole and had started eating Barry’s, Barry had started eating his applesauce, and the Trickster had expanded his juggling routine to include his rubbery omelet and the plate it had been sitting on.
“Really, Trickster. Must you play with your food?” a tall man with neat brown hair and striking green eyes asked as he primly sat himself down on the Weather Wizard’s other side. Even if Barry hadn’t seen him several dozen times before, the top that he promptly started to spin on the table would have been enough to identify him as the Top.
“What? It’s not like it’s edible,” the Trickster replied as he continued to juggle. The Top glanced down at his own tray, then shuddered.
“I think Digger will be getting a second serving of breakfast today,” he said quietly.
“Ace! Thanks heaps, mate!” a small, lean man with poofy brown hair said as he sat down on the Trickster’s right. As he reached across the table and grabbed the Top’s serving of breakfast casserole, Barry let out a small sigh. It seemed Captain Boomerang would be joining him for breakfast, too.
“Who are you?” the Top asked, eyes still fixed on his top.
“I’m Barry Allen, and I—-”
“Convicted of seven counts of selling heroin, two counts of selling methamphetamines, four counts of selling benzodiazepines, two counts of obstruction of justice, and seventeen counts of tampering with evidence. Quite a resume—especially for a police scientist,” the Top said. Barry stared at him in shock. Even he had trouble remembering all the counts he had been convicted on—and it had been his trial!
“Well, yes. You’ve got quite a memory.”
“I am an engineer, as well as a supervillain. Good recall is quite necessary for most of my work,” the Top replied as he spun his top again.
“Wait. You’re that crooked cop?” Captain Boomerang asked. Well, at least that’s what Barry thought he was saying. It was a bit difficult to tell with the man’s mouth being as full of food as it was.
“Have there been any other ones who were recently sent to prison?” Barry asked. Captain Boomerang actually swallowed before he replied.
“Not that I know of, mate. Just don’t understand what you’re doin’ at our table, is all.”
“He’s here because he’s under my protection. He reminds me of my brother, so I’m going to keep him safe,” the Weather Wizard explained.
“What’s he need your protection for, Wiz? Ain’t he on the Candy Man’s payroll?”
“Call me sentimental,” the Weather Wizard replied. Evidently, he didn’t want to go through another round of arguing about whether or not Barry was actually innocent, and Barry couldn’t really blame him.
“Fair enough,” Captain Boomerang said. Then he turned his attention to Barry.
“Nice to meet you, mate. Welcome to the table.” Captain Boomerang spat into his hand before extending it, and Barry very reluctantly shook it.
“Captain Boomerang, right?”
“Just call me Digger, mate. Everybody does.”
“And you don’t care that I’m supposed to be a corrupt cop?” Barry asked.
“Why would I, mate? You never beat me up or framed me for nothin’---and besides, the Weather Wizard likes you. That’s gotta count for somethin’,” Captain Boomerang replied. As he started to shove more food into his mouth, the Top raised an eyebrow.
“Mark, are you sure you wish to extend your protection to a police scientist who was convicted for being on the Candy Man’s payroll? The prison population, in aggregate, does not like police officers, but they like corrupt police officers even less,” he said.
“Here’s the thing, though. I don’t think he’s guilty,” the Weather Wizard replied.
“Why?” the Top asked.
“Because he’s good in the way that my brother was—all noble and kind and upstanding. I just don’t think he could be guilty of what he’s been convicted of,” the Weather Wizard replied.
“Not very empirical evidence—but I am inclined to agree with you that he is innocent. His wife is the journalist who opened the investigation into the corruption at the police department headquarters. If we assume Dr. Bartholomew Allen to be guilty but his wife innocent, I find it very difficult to believe that a journalist of her caliber would not only not have already suspected his guilt, but also would persist in thinking him innocent even after the apparent evidence began to pile up. And if we assume that both were guilty, then why would she open up an investigation that would ultimately incriminate her own husband? It would be as though my Lisa had called the police in response to a crime she knew I had committed,” the Top said. The Trickster suddenly stopped juggling and leaned forward in his seat.
“Simple. She knew what he was up to, and they had a fight, so she thought, “I’ll fix him”, and opened up the investigation. Once she cooled down and realized that she didn’t really want her husband sent to the state pen, she tried to backtrack, but by that point the police had gotten involved, and all she could do was try to argue for him at the trial,” he said.
“But that assumes that she knew what her husband was doing and was all right with it—-and if Allen is guilty, I don’t think she could have known. I’ve read most of Iris West-Allen’s articles, and she doesn’t strike me as the sort of woman who would be okay with her husband working for the Candy Man of all people,” the Pied Piper said.
Barry wasn’t sure if Iris would be flattered or horrified to learn that one of his Rogues regularly read her articles.
“That is the impression I received of her as well—-but really, that, and Dr. Bartholomew Allen’s innocence in general, is almost beside the point,” the Top said.
“It is?” the Weather Wizard asked.
“What’s at stake here is not so much Dr. Bartholomew Allen’s guilt or innocence as it is whether you will protect him, and what the potential fallout for that decision may be. I mentioned that I believe him to be innocent, but the majority of the prison population does not share that belief. Announcing to the world that you have placed a crooked police officer under your protection will make most of our fellow inmates quite unhappy with you,” the Top explained. The Weather Wizard waved his hand dismissively.
“I don’t care if they like me or not. It’s not like any of them are a real threat to someone who can whip up tornadoes.”
“Not even the Mirror Master and Captain Cold?”
“Okay, yeah, they might be able to make things difficult for me if they really tried to—but why would they?”
“If they believe that Dr. Bartholomew Allen is guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted—and there is a distinct possibility that they do—-they will be furious at the notion that you have extended your protection to him. Captain Cold hates all police officers, especially corrupt ones, and Mirror Master hates anyone on the Candy Man’s payroll,” the Top said as he spun his top again.
“Then we’ll just have to convince them that Allen isn’t guilty,” the Pied Piper said. Heat Wave shook his head.
“I don’t think that’ll work, Piper. I’ve never been able to argue Len out of anything. If he thinks Allen is guilty, we’ll never convince him otherwise,” he said. From his own experiences with Captain Cold, Barry was inclined to agree with Heat Wave.
The Weather Wizard swallowed hard.
“We, uh, may be in more trouble than I thought, Crewcut,” he said to Barry.
In spite of this prediction, the next few minutes passed mostly uneventfully. Captain Boomerang wolfed down a horrifying amount of breakfast casserole, the Trickster introduced the Rubber Egg Monster to a decidedly unimpressed Top, and Barry managed to finish his applesauce and choke down the rest of his milk.
It wasn’t exactly a hearty breakfast, but between the Rubber Egg Monster and his impending sense of doom, Barry had mostly lost his appetite.
“Hey, maybe we’ll get lucky and they just won’t show up today,” Heat Wave suggested as he finished the last of Barry’s breakfast casserole.
“You aren’t talking about me, are you, Mick?” a man with a ski-jump nose and perfectly maintained brown hair asked as he arrived at their table. It was the Mirror Master.
“Speak of the devil,” the Weather Wizard muttered.
“No! No! I was talking about…uh…somebody else! Yeah, that’s it! Somebody else who definitely isn’t you or Len!” Heat Wave said. The Weather Wizard actually facepalmed in response.
“All right, who did something stupid this time?” the Mirror Master asked.
“Who says we did something stupid, mate?” Captain Boomerang replied.
“Because when you guys start acting nervous around Len and me, it’s almost always because someone screwed up and you don’t want us finding out about it.”
“How much trouble could we possibly get into in prison?” the Trickster asked. The Mirror Master looked at him incredulously.
“Considering that, between the eight of us, we have built cold guns, teleported away using shiny shoes, started food fights, escaped with gimmicked toys, started fires, entered alternate dimensions, made boomerangs, and dyed all the prison uniforms pink, all while behind bars, I don’t think I need to answer that question.”
“I didn’t mean to dye all the uniforms pink. It was an accident,” Heat Wave muttered. At this point, the Mirror Master finally seemed to notice Barry.
“Wait. Who are you?” he asked.
“He’s Mark’s new cellmate. Evidently, he reminds Mark of his brother, and as such, Mark placed him under his protection,” the Top explained coolly.
“Does Mark’s new cellmate have a name?” the Mirror Master asked.
“Sure does, mate! Sam, this is Barry Allen! Barry, this is my best mate, Sam Scudder,” Captain Boomerang said. Barry braced himself for the worst, but after a few seconds, Mirror Master gave him a smug smile.
“You probably know me better as the Mirror Master. I can’t say I ever expected Mark of all people to take a newbie under his wing—but then, he does tend to get sentimental around the time of his brother’s death. Nice to meet you, Allen,” he said.
Barry wondered how his enemies would react if they learned that they had effectively invited the Flash to join his own Rogues’ Gallery.
“Thank you,” he said awkwardly. Really, what else was there to say?
“So tell me, Allen. Which one of my teammates did something stupid enough for them to not want Captain Cold and me to join them for breakfast?” Mirror Master asked casually.
“Well….I…” Before Barry could come up with a good explanation that wouldn’t involve revealing the fact that he’d been sent to prison on charges of corruption, Captain Cold himself suddenly arrived at the table.
“Which one of you morons invited a corrupt cop to hang out with you?” he demanded. Mirror Master looked confused.
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you watch TV, Scudder?”
“Not when I’m working on the blueprints for my new mirror jetpack,” the Mirror Master replied.
“In that case, the guy James is sitting across from is a police scientist named Barry Allen. He’s been all over the news—-because he’s on the Candy Man’s payroll,” Captain Cold explained.
“But he can’t be. Mardon just said that he’s taken Allen under his wing, and there’s no way he’d offer to protect a corrupt cop,” the Mirror Master replied. Captain Cold walked over to the Weather Wizard and pulled him out of his seat.
“Hey! What’s the big idea?” the Weather Wizard squawked.
“You better have a good explanation for this, Mardon. You know how I feel about crooked cops,” Captain Cold growled.
“I know, I know—but he’s not a corrupt cop,” the Weather Wizard replied.
“He was convicted for bein’ one.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s actually guilty.” Captain Cold gave the Weather Wizard a funny look.
“You actually believe that crap he spewed about bein’ framed?” he asked.
“I do. I just don’t think he could be guilty of what he’s been accused of. He’s…he’s too much like my brother to have worked for the Candy Man,” the Weather Wizard said.
“Wait. He really was convicted of working for the Candy Man?” the Mirror Master asked.
“Yes,” the Weather Wizard replied weakly.
“Then you can’t be protecting him. I know what the Candy Man’s men are like. They’re bad news—-even by our rotten standards,” the Mirror Master said.
“And normally I’d agree with you—but I really do think he’s innocent.”
“You willin’ to stake your spot in the Rogues on that belief?” Captain Cold asked. The Weather Wizard’s eyes went wide.
“What do you mean, stake my spot in the Rogues?”
“I mean that I ain’t gonna work with nobody who wants to pal around with corrupt cops. Either you stop protecting him, or you’re out of the group.”
“You can’t kick me out! I’m the most powerful member of the team!” the Weather Wizard protested.
“I don’t care how powerful you are—if you’re willing to protect someone who would take a broken beer bottle to the shoulder of a twelve-year-old boy, I’m not going to let you be part of my crew,” Captain Cold replied.
“But I…I can’t just abandon him. He’s not like us. He’s good. If I don’t protect him, he’ll get eaten alive in here.” Captain Cold sighed.
“Look, Mardon. I know you get moody about your brother ‘round about this time, but Allen ain’t your brother. You can’t be treatin’ him like he is just ‘cause he happens to remind you of him,” he said.
“You’re talking about me like I think he’s actually my brother! I’m not crazy! I know he’s a different person!”
“Are you sure ? Because you do tend to get kind of….irrational…around the anniversary of your brother’s death. Remember how you got super attached to that baby bird you found this time last year? You started talking to it like it was your brother, and when it died, you lost control of your weather wand and somehow created a rainstorm that lasted for two weeks straight,” the Mirror Master said.
In response to this statement, the Trickster burst into giggles, and Captain Boomerang laughed so hard that milk shot out of his nose.
“You promised you wouldn’t tell anyone about that!” Weather Wizard squawked.
“And I wasn’t going to…but now it seems like your instability is starting to become a recurring issue—one that we’re going to have to address for the good of the team,” the Mirror Master replied.
“Scudder’s right. If we’re gonna be relyin’ on you in the field, we need to be sure that you ain’t gonna freak out on us,” Captain Cold added.
The Weather Wizard slammed his hands down on the table angrily.
“I am not unstable!” he snarled, and once again, Barry could have sworn that his eyes were crackling with electricity. While he found the display to be rather intimidating, it didn’t seem to phase the other Rogues. Trickster even snickered.
“Nothing says “emotionally stable” like violent emotional outbursts, am I right?” The apparent electrical storm around the Weather Wizard’s eyes increased in intensity, and Barry suddenly found himself worrying that he would soon find himself in the middle of a fistfight that would get him sent to solitary confinement.
“Look, I don’t want this to turn into a brawl. I’ll….I’ll just go,” he said quietly.
“Then go—and don’t come back. Hell will freeze over before I let a corrupt cop join the Rogues,” Captain Cold growled.
“No! Crewcut, you can’t! You’ll get yourself killed!” Weather Wizard protested. The worry on his face seemed completely sincere, and Barry couldn’t help but wonder if the man really had confused him with his dead brother somehow. Why else would a professional criminal show so much concern for a man he’d only just met?
“Mardon, you’ve got to calm down. You aren’t thinking clearly,” the Mirror Master said calmly.
“I’m thinking perfectly clearly! Without my protection, he’ll get killed! You know he will!” Weather Wizard cried.
“And good riddance if he does! He’s got it comin’!” Captain Cold snarled.
“You keep saying that Allen isn’t my brother, Snart. That’s true—but newsflash! He’s not your father, either!”
A dead silence fell over the table. Evidently, Captain Cold’s father was not a topic to be brought up lightly.
“You wanna repeat that, Mardon?” Captain Cold’s voice was filled with the chill of an Antarctic winter.
“Easy, Len. Easy. We’re all friends here, remember?” the Mirror Master said.
“You know what my old man did to me—-did to my sister . If Mardon wants to protect someone like him, then he’s no friend of mine,” Captain Cold replied.
“Len, Mardon’s not thinking straight right now. He’s emotional over his brother’s death, and he’s not acting rationally. Give him a week or two, and he’ll straighten out. You’ll see,” Mirror Master said.
“ I’m not acting rationally? What about him ? Or is it somehow different for him to look at Allen and see his father?” Weather Wizard protested.
“They are both on the Candy Man’s payroll—and the Candy Man’s men are very bad news. I grew up in a neighborhood they ran, and anyone who didn’t do what they said was picking out their own headstone. There was this old man who owned a corner store who used to give me free candy and comics when I was a kid, and they shot him for refusing to let them sell dope on his property. And no one ever got arrested for it, because everyone in the neighborhood knew that most of the local beat cops were on the take—and that even if you found one of the good ones, the Candy Man would learn that you’d blown the whistle and have you beaten or killed next,” Mirror Master said.
“And that might be relevant, if Dr. Bartholomew Allen were, indeed, on the Candy Man’s payroll. But to my mind, it is self-evident that he is not,” the Top said suddenly.
“Wait. You don’t think Allen is guilty?” Mirror Master asked.
“Neither do I, for what it’s worth,” the Pied Piper chimed in.
“Oh, not this nonsense again,” Trickster muttered.
“Why do you two think he’s innocent?”
“Piper thinks he’s innocent because he has no street smarts, and Roscoe thinks he’s innocent because he can’t read people, and therefore assumes that everyone will act based purely on logic instead of on emotions,” the Trickster said.
“I wasn’t asking you, James, I was asking Dillon and Piper,” Mirror Master replied as he sat down next to Barry in the seat that the Weather Wizard had vacated.
“What makes them different from Mardon?” Captain Cold asked.
“Because they aren’t emotionally compromised by reminders of beloved, dead brothers. If they think he’s innocent, they might actually have arguments worth listening to. So why don’t you and Mardon take a seat while we hash this out? It’s not like we have anything particularly important to do,” Mirror Master replied.
“Fine. But this better not take all day,” Captain Cold said as he sat down on Mick’s left.
“I am not emotionally compromised,” Weather Wizard muttered as he made his way around the table.
“You keep telling yourself that,” the Trickster said unhelpfully as Weather Wizard re-seated himself on Captain Boomerang’s right. The Wizard glared at him, but Trickster remained unmoved.
“Okay, Piper. Make your case,” Mirror Master said once everyone was situated.
“I asked Allen if he was innocent, and when he said yes, I could hear that his heartbeat wasn’t elevated. Even if we assume that he’s the most hardened corrupt officer in the world, I wouldn’t think that he would be able to lie directly to the faces of the most infamous criminals in Central City without some anxiety,” the Pied Piper replied.
“Blimey! You can hear people’s heartbeats?” Captain Boomerang exclaimed.
“I can also hear the mice in the walls, Terrifying Tim’s pacemaker, and the conversation that the warden is having with some of the guards in his office.” Well, that certainly explained why it was so difficult to sneak up on the Pied Piper.
“Terrifying Tim has a pacemaker?” Heat Wave asked.
“He does.”
“Who’s Terrifying Tim?” Captain Boomerang asked.
“One of Handsome Jack Giacomo’s boys. He’s the one with more acne than a high school full of teenage boys,” the Trickster replied. Captain Boomerang shook his head.
“Does everyone in this bloody prison have a nickname now?” Barry was wondering the same thing.
“Not No Nickname Fred,” Heat Wave said. The Pied Piper stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled a second time.
“We’ve gotten off-topic again. Mirror Master wants to know why Roscoe and I think that Allen is innocent, not about who does and doesn’t have a nickname.” Mirror Master nodded.
“And you’ve done a pretty good job explaining your position. Dillon, why do you think he’s innocent?” The Top didn’t look up in response. Instead, he spun his top again, his eyes following the toy’s movement.
“I watched Dr. Bartholomew Allen’s trial. The prosecution failed to adequately present a case for his guilt. There were too many irregularities.”
“Such as?”
“First, Dr. Bartholomew Allen’s wife, a noted investigative journalist, was the one who opened the investigation into the corruption in the Central City Police Department’s Forensics branch. It seems counterintuitive that she would open up an investigation into the forensics department if Dr. Bartholomew Allen was guilty. Why would she incriminate her own husband? And if we follow the alternative hypothesis that Mrs. Allen did not know of her husband’s guilt, it seems highly unlikely that she would have had no inkling of his guilt, given her position and reputation, and even more unlikely that she would persist in proclaiming his innocence as the evidence piled up.”
“That don’t prove nothin’, Dillon. Even if his missus knew he was guilty, she might’ve been too afraid to blow the whistle on him. My mom knew what my old man was up to, and she never said a word, ‘cause she knew he’d make her pay if she did,” Captain Cold replied.
The Top continued as though Captain Cold hadn’t said anything.
“Second, much of the evidence was circumstantial in nature, and based upon Dr. Bartholomew Allen’s mysterious disappearances from his laboratory. Most of his presumed illicit meetings with the Candy Man were supposed to have happened during these disappearances, and yet there was no evidence that these meetings did take place at those times.”
“Then why did he lie—really badly, at that–- about where he was during those disappearances? Why didn’t he just say where he really was?” the Trickster asked.
“Third, a man who was sufficiently skilled in deception to blind an entire police department to his corruption should have been able to invent more convincing alibis than the ones Dr. Bartholomew Allen provided at his trial.”
“There’s a difference between being able to trick people who don’t suspect you and being able to lie in the face of overwhelming evidence at a trial. There’s a reason I always plead guilty when I get arrested,” the Trickster replied.
“Maybe—but your version of events would require Allen to be smart enough to deceive his coworkers, and possibly his own wife, for years, but then be dumb enough to both insist on his innocence and lie badly on the stand instead of just quietly pleading guilty in the face of what you called overwhelming evidence. Isn’t that a little inconsistent?” the Pied Piper asked. The Trickster laughed.
“Piper, we Rogues are living proof that intelligence and common sense are not always aligned—especially when egos get involved,” he said.
“Oi! I resemble that remark,” Captain Boomerang said casually. The Trickster smiled.
“Allen was the same way. He got so used to being able to outwit everyone else that he convinced himself that he could still do it even in the face of the evidence—and by the time he figured out he couldn’t, it was too late,” he explained.
“I am not finished,” the Top said testily.
“By all means, continue. I’m not necessarily convinced, but I’ve been enjoying all the jailhouse lawyering,” Mirror Master replied.
“Fourth, the primary witness to most of the alleged crimes benefited enormously from Allen being incarcerated. It is very convenient that this young Dr. Carl Anderson found out that his direct superior was on the payroll of a drug dealer, and that he managed to be the only witness to many of the alleged criminal transactions between Dr. Bartholomew Allen and the Candy Man. It was alleged that Dr. Bartholomew Allen was on the Candy Man’s payroll for years, and yet somehow, this young police scientist was able to uncover his well-hidden secret after only a few months.”
“Sometimes people just get lucky. That’s how I made my first mirror discovery,” the Mirror Master pointed out.
“Fifth, none of the hard evidence was more than six or seven months old at the time of the trial. Quite odd, considering that Dr. Bartholomew Allen was stated to have been working for the Candy Man for at least three years. While more recent evidence would naturally be easier to find, I find it difficult to believe that there was no direct evidence of this earlier criminal activity. It is nearly impossible to completely cover one’s tracks. The case for corruption going back further than seven months was based purely on the testimony of one Jared McRoy—which raises further questions. Why would McRoy testify against Allen, who was supposedly part of the same operation? The Candy Man is not known to appreciate stool pigeons, and the risks of testifying against him usually outweigh the rewards of a shortened sentence. Even if McRoy was stupid enough to ignore the risks, the shorter sentence would inherently make his reliability as a witness somewhat dubious.” Barry was starting to get annoyed by the fact that his lawyer hadn’t thought to bring up some of these points. In retrospect, settling for a public defender had probably been a bad idea, but he had assumed that his innocence would be self-evident—and he and Iris had been having a lot of financial problems lately. He hadn’t wanted to waste thousands of dollars on an expensive lawyer for a case he had been sure he would win.
Barry had badly underestimated how much effort had been put into framing him, and how desperate Central City’s justice system would be to prove that they had rooted out the corruption in the police force.
“Sixth, I do not think it can be ignored that the hard evidence of corruption in the forensics department can be dated to within three weeks of young Dr. Carl Anderson’s being hired to work for the Central City Police Department, and that there is little or no hard evidence from before that point. If it were not for the fact that drugs were found in a hidden compartment in Dr. Bartholomew Allen’s office, I believe that Dr. Carl Anderson himself would have been the most likely suspect. It may be a coincidence, but it is a very convenient one for the new hire.”
“So…what? You think that Anderson framed Allen?” Mirror Master asked.
“It seems like a distinct possibility. If you are a corrupt police scientist, you suddenly learn that an investigation into potential corruption has been opened, and you have any brains, you would quickly realize that the best way to avoid being caught would be to divert the attention of the investigators. Destroying all the relevant evidence is likely to be impossible—but pointing the evidence at a coworker, particularly one who is well-known for odd behavior, is quite doable. It’s certainly what I would do in that position. And if you are assisted by a powerful crime lord who would have ample motivation to keep you in your current position, the frame job would become even simpler,” the Top said.
“How much time did you spend watchin’ Allen’s trial, Dillon?” Captain Cold asked.
“Once I realized the irregularities, quite a while. I do not like disorganization, and so devoted myself to organizing the available evidence into a pattern that made more sense to me.”
“You’re a weird freak, you know that?”
“And you are an unsophisticated thug. But that is irrelevant to the case—which brings me to my seventh point. In addition to the drugs, several thousand dollars were also found in Dr. Bartholomew Allen’s office shortly before he was arrested. This is what one would expect, of course—but Dr. Bartholomew Allen was supposed to have been on the Candy Man’s payroll for years. $6,000 would not be sufficient payment for years of corruption. There would have had to have been other payments—and if that is the case, where did the money go? Dr. Bartholomew Allen and his wife did not live at all lavishly, and, while there were a few irregularities in their bank accounts, they did not seem to suggest that anyone was regularly depositing mysteriously large sums of money with no clear origin. Nor was it suggested that Dr. Bartholomew Allen had a secret Swiss bank account or something similar—the investigation would surely have uncovered it if it existed. Are we to assume that Dr. Bartholomew Allen buried most of the money the Candy Man gave him in some hidden location? Why would he do that, when opening a bank account under another name would be both simpler and more profitable?”
This was such a surreal experience. What, Barry wondered, would the Top think if he knew that he was defending the innocence of the man he had once tried to age into an old man using a stolen aging serum?
“If there’s so much evidence for his innocence, why didn’t his lawyer bring it up at the trial?” the Trickster asked.
“Because he had a public defender who was overworked, underpaid, and facing a justice system that desperately wanted to prove that it had solved the police’s department’s corruption problem,” the Pied Piper replied.
“That, in and of itself, was also irregular. If you are on the Candy Man’s payroll, why not hire a lawyer? The money being paid under the table would certainly help offset the costs of a lawyer—and, in any case, Dr. Bartholomew Allen was not so impoverished that his hiring a lawyer would have been questioned. He was facing financial difficulties, not destitute.”
“When’d you swallow that dictionary, Dillon?” Captain Cod asked. The Top sent his top skittering across the table yet again.
“Eighth—”
“Okay, okay, that’s enough. You’ve got me convinced. Allen’s innocent. The timing around the lab assistant seems too perfect to be a coincidence, and if he framed Allen, that would definitely explain why Allen doesn’t seem to have any of the money that he would’ve been paid,” the Mirror Master interrupted.
“And you, Leonard?” The Top asked.
“The whole frame-up thing seems a little out there—---but the thing about the money….no crook, cop on the payroll or not, would just sit on thousands of dollars for years. You’d at least put it in the bank or somethin’. Or, more likely, you’d spend it like my old man did. Which means he ain’t like us. He’s innocent,” Captain Cold said.
Barry turned to the Top.
“With your ability to build a case, I’m surprised you’ve never tried to argue for yourself,” he said. The Top gave him an odd look.
“Why would I do that? My arguments for you were based on facts and probabilities. As I am always guilty, I would never be able to argue for myself in the same way. The facts would all point to my guilt. And lying has never been one of my strengths,” he said. With that, the Top turned his attention back to the teetotum that was still spinning on the table.
“Wait. You all actually believe that he’s innocent?” The Trickster asked.
“ I don’t. But I also don’t care,” Captain Boomerang replied.
“I do. The frame-up that his lab assistant probably pulled is a classic bit of misdirection for someone who doesn’t want to get caught,” the Mirror Master said.
“Just said so, didn’t I?” Captain Cold said.
“But if he’s innocent, why did he lie on the stand about his mysterious disappearances? And why did he have a secret compartment in his office where money and drugs could be stored?”
“Maybe it’s because he’s the Flash!” Heat Wave exclaimed. The Top shook his head.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mick. The Flash is not a police scientist—and if he were, he would not have let himself be arrested for a crime he did not commit.” Barry raised his hand.
“The secret compartment has a simple explanation. It’s…uh…where I store my Golden Age Flash comics at work. My coworkers think I’m a geek as it is. If they ever found out that I read comics in my office, I’d be a laughingstock.” The Trickster burst out laughing.
“I don’t know if you’re telling the truth or not, but either way–you’re hilarious! I say we keep you around!” he exclaimed. Captain Cold nodded.
“I don’t like cops, Allen—but if you’re innocent, you don’t deserve to be in here, and you didn’t deserve the specific type of crap I was givin’ you earlier. I’ve been accused of crap I didn’t do before, too—-so that was my bad. You won’t get no more trouble for me. Not in here, anyway,” Captain Cold said. It was the closest thing to an apology Barry had ever heard Captain Cold give.
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Hey, where’s my apology? I’m the one you were calling crazy and threatening to throw out of the Rogues!” Weather Wizard demanded.
“Yeah—’cause based off what I knew, you were actin’ crazy. Still—I guess your instincts are better than I thought.”
“That’s it? That’s all I’m getting?”
“And you can protect Allen as much as you want. I’ll even throw in my own protection, if that makes you feel better,” Captain Cold replied.
“You will ?” Barry asked.
“Why not? Like I said, you don’t belong in here to begin with, which means you don’t deserve to get the crap kicked out of you either. And it’s not like it’s any skin off my nose. Nobody in the prison’s stupid enough to actually challenge me over it. Unlike Mardon, I can actually throw a punch,” Captain Cold replied.
“Um…thanks?” Barry said, half-expecting to wake up and find himself in bed next to Iris. Where else but in a dream would both Weather Wizard and Captain Cold offer their protection to the Flash?
“Breakfast is over! Back to your cells!”
Captain Cold looked down at his still-full plate in dismay.
“You owe me your lunch serving, Scudder.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not my fault that you didn’t eat anything while Dillon was playing defense lawyer,” the Mirror Master replied.
“You can have my lunch serving, Captain,” Heat Wave offered as everyone stood up and started to file out of the cafeteria. Given the quality of the breakfast, Barry thought about offering his lunch, too, but decided against it. As bad as the food was, he didn’t want to risk starving.
“I’m gonna hold you to that,” Captain Cold replied as he dumped his tray into one of the garbage cans. As the two of them continued their conversation, Weather Wizard darted over to Barry and smiled apologetically.
“I’m, uh, really sorry about that, Crewcut. I didn’t think about how the guys were going to react to you, and—-well—that could’ve ended really badly,” he babbled.
“But it didn’t. In fact, it looks like I’m going to have at least two people watching my back in here—and I’m clearly going to need all the help I can get,” Barry replied.
“I can’t believe you managed to win the guys over—but then again, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. You’re like Clyde, and everybody loved him,” the Weather Wizard replied.
“It sounds like your brother was a good man.”
“He was—even to me. Even after all the trouble I gave him. I don’t know why he put up with me. Of course, seeing as how I was supposed to protect you and dragged you into a Rogue court trial instead, I don’t know why you’re still putting up with me.”
“Aside from the fact that I would rather not get shanked, you mean?” The Weather Wizard laughed.
“Good point, Crewcut. Which reminds me—better stay close to me,” he said as they left the cafeteria.
“I will. What’s next on the schedule?” Barry asked.
“Two hours in our cell. It’s going to be thrilling ,” the Weather Wizard replied.
“And after that?”
“Work. I’m in the library. I don’t know where you’ll be.” The library? Well, that explained where all the Twain books in the cell had come from.
“I think someone mentioned something about a sewing shop,” Barry offered.
“In that case, you’re in luck—because you’ll be learning from the best,” the Mirror Master said.
“Who’s that?” Barry asked. He was pretty sure Paul Gambi had been released on parole a few months ago. Was there some other famous tailor in the state pen?
“Me. My mother was a seamstress, so I’m actually pretty handy with a needle,” Mirror Master replied. Barry stared at him in surprise. Apparently, there were still some things he didn’t know about his Rogues.
“And you’re offering to help me? Why would you do that?”
“Prison is boring, and you’re interesting. It’s not every day I meet a falsely accused police scientist,” Mirror Master replied.
“In that case, I’m certainly not going to turn down the help.”
“Of course you’re not. Who would turn down help from the most successful criminal in the Twin Cities?” Aha! There was the Mirror Master whose villainous schemes Barry had to keep thwarting!
How would he react if he knew that he had just volunteered to help his hated nemesis, the Flash?