Catwoman - Tiger Hunt

by Robert Asprin

  His moniker and his disguises were legitimate business precautions, not flights of fancy---like Eddie Lobb's unfortunate notion of tiger spirits. At times the brawler seemed to forget he'd gotten his distinctive facial scars from a car antenna after failing behind in his gambling debts. His faith in tiger spirits and transformations was appallingly sincere. And while the Connection did not understand the arcane processes that produced those costumed characters whose talents did in fact lie outside the normal human range, he was quite certain Tiger was not destined to be any more than the punk he'd always been.

  Mattheson wrote Tiger's name on a piece of paper, then embellished it with question marks. The scarred man was still giving his interpretation of events and the inevitability of his transformation.

  "It was that box you gave me. It pushed me over the top; the tiger spirit came to see if I'm worthy, but I made the mistake of giving the box to that bitch instead of putting it with the others. But I'm over the top now."

  Tiger was over the edge, not the top. The scarred man was writing his own death warrant.

  "Batman's my test, my final exam to see if I'm worthy to call myself the Black Tiger. When I've taken care of Batman, see, everybody will know I'm worthy."

  The Connection tapped his pen on the paper. He wanted to believe everyone who wore a costume was as deluded as his lieutenant, but a man couldn't always have what he wanted. Batman was real. Batman considered Gotham City as his personal domain. Batman was near the top of the list of reasons why the Connection was careful to keep his hands clean and his face hidden.

  He weighed his options. He could fry Tiger where he stood, pull back from the deal, and quietly accept his losses. Or he could give Tiger a bit more rope and let Batman hang him instead. He depressed the foot switch. The lasers struck his face and the holograph became directly animated again.

  "I don't care about Batman or black tigers. I found you dying in a gutter, Eddie, and I can put you right back where I found you whenever I want. You have a job to do for me: get me that icon. Do whatever you have to do: double-cross the Bessarabians, find their mysterious enemies, squeeze the gangs, fight a duel with Batman---do whatever you want, but get me that icon."

  The telemetry began flashing. The telltale tension of betrayal and deception had been detected. Well, that was hardly a surprise. A man who believed he was destined to become the Black Tiger would scarcely imagine that he'd spend his life working for someone else. It was hardly a threat, either.

  "Monday morning. In the usual place, Tiger."

  The Connection tapped the escape sequence into his computers and Tiger was alone.

  Batman saw the police officer get off the elevator and head his way like a bear to honey. They made eye contact. Batman made a quick side-arm gesture, and the officer waited where he was. The surgeon to whom Batman was listening missed the entire transaction as he continued his recitation of the young Russian's injuries and prognosis. He'd lost parts of a lung, his liver, his intestines, and his stomach.

  "A shotgun at that range does quite a bit of damage," the surgeon concluded unnecessarily.

  "But he's likely to pull through?"

  The green-clad surgeon winced and looked uncomfortable. "We've done a lot of work. We think we've repaired the worst of the damage and stopped the bleeding. But the risk of infection is high. We'll know better in a day or two." He backstepped, effectively ending the conversation.

  The police officer started moving again. Batman promised that he'd call in the morning. He blamed himself for the Russian's sorry condition. In his effort to gain more information and land bigger fish, he'd allowed a crime to progress beyond the point where he had it stopped. He'd needlessly exposed a young man---an ignorant and naive and therefore innocent young man---to the naked danger of the streets. And, in the end, he hadn't learned anything.

  "Batman?" The officer had stopped just beyond conversation distance. He was clearly uncomfortable with his assigned duty. "The Feds came and took the body, before we could identify it. They chewed up Commissioner Gordon pretty bad. Now Gordon wants to meet with you in his office. We've got to hurry. We had trouble finding you, and we're going to be late."

  Gordon's office wasn't any place Batman particularly wanted to be, but to refuse the officer's invitation was to endanger a long-standing, but always delicate, relationship.

  "Let's not be any later than necessary," he said with more enthusiasm than he felt, and followed the officer through the hospital.

  He followed in silence. He held little hope that the meeting with Gordon would be productive, and that little was squashed when he saw a quartet of unfamiliar faces waiting with the Commissioner.

  Gordon rolled his eyes as if to say he was powerless in this situation and that Batman had brought it on himself. Then the bureaucratic bloodletting began. Bruce Wayne knew when he became the Batman that many of the people he was trying to help---the regulated, publicly funded, overworked agents of law enforcement---would stand in his way at every opportunity. He accepted their resentment and their small-minded insults as part of the price he paid, but after the Fed chief began his fourth or fifth diatribe about "Besserb counterinsurgency" Batman lost his patience.

  With tight-lipped politeness he explained that the corpse they had appropriated had been a Gagauzi while he lived---a Turkish-speaking Christian from the central highlands of Bessarabia. The young man in the hospital was an ethnic Russian whose grandparents had been relocated to Bessarabia by Josef Stalin in 1940. The drive-by shooting had probably been an unfortunate coincidence, but if it wasn't there was a good chance it had been engineered by Rumanian-speaking Moldovan agents whose interest in preventing the consummation of the icons-for-arms deal was intense and personal. There were, therefore, three discrete factions, all of whom lived in an area politicians referred to as Bessarabia, but none of them thought of themselves as Bessarabians.

  The Serbs, Batman added, were fighting in what remained of Yugoslavia.

  One of the Feds had the decency to take notes; the other three folded their arms in obdurate silence. Gordon tried to break the stalemate with levity.

  "Oh, for the good old days of East versus West and one-size-fits-all black hats."

  The Fed chief, who was not the one taking notes, wiped his hands together as if they'd come in contact with something unclean. "You've compromised a major international counterinsurgency operation, Mr. Whoever-you-are-in-there. I'm not at liberty to tell you the initiatives involved, but we had our operatives in place, ready to interdict, when your grandstanding blew the whole thing sky-high. Now we're back to ground zero. The transfer never took place. We've wasted our time and the taxpayers' money. We're stuck up here hoping that the Besserbs"---he pointedly did not change his pronunciation---"will reestablish contact before they head back up to Canada and we've lost them."

  Operatives in place? Catwoman? Catwoman a federal operative? Catwoman a spy? The notion was ludicrous, and yet she was the only one at the scene whose motives remained unclear. It made precious little sense, but, then again, the whole situation made precious little sense.

  Batman stoically endured the scorn and veiled threats until the Feds had tired themselves out and left. Then he turned to Gordon. "I've got to stop them," he said flatly, without elaborating on which "them" he had in mind.

  "I know, you did your best." Gordon sighed. "Not even you could be expected to unravel this mess in time. It's a whole new world out there, and we're just trying to keep the peace in Gotham City. The Feds are claiming preeminent jurisdiction. I'm ready to give it to him and just hope that there isn't more bloodshed."

  "No, Gordon. I can get to the bottom of it---at least here in Gotham City. I've got the key." He thought of the icon sitting in the Wayne Foundation vault. "I can lure all the parties into one place, and when I have them there, I'll let you know."

  Gordon started to argue, then thought better of it. "You know how to reach me. Be careful. To the Feds you're just another amateur vigilante. If they can't catc
h these---who did you say they were, Ga-Ga-somethings?---they'll be just as happy putting you out of business."

  Batman thanked him for the warning and left.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "It's not really in our mandate," the Director of Wilderness Warriors said between puffs on his pipe.

  He was in his mid-forties and, despite the pipe, the neatly trimmed hair, and establishment-approved tweed jacket, he looked more like he'd be more comfortable out in the park, wearing love beads and bell-bottoms, and singing "Give Peace a Chance" through a haze of marijuana smoke. This made his apparent reluctance to do something about the stack of photographs, with narrative paragraphs on the back of each one, all the more disappointing to Bonnie. She didn't trust herself to say anything or to pick up the photographs he'd returned to her for fear that she'd throw them in his face and wind up without a job. Jobs---even an internship like this that paid next to nothing and required a major subsidy from her parents---were very important to her generation. She expected her boss, as a member of an earlier generation, to be a freer spirit.

  "It's very well done," the director assured her, picking up the stack again. "Very compelling. Something should certainly be done about this man. But I don't see where we're the ones---"

  "If we're not the ones, Tim, then who is? Where do I send these pictures? I have to find someone who'll take matters into his---or her---own hands. Does somebody have to break into this apartment and do what's got to be done?"

  The director gave Bonnie a sidelong glance and began tapping the paper rhythmically against his palm. "That could only result in negative publicity," he mumbled. "We could lose money. Can't do that." He tapped the papers a few more times before coming to a conclusion he was not about to share with Bonnie---at least not yet. "Can I keep these?" he asked; she nodded. "I've got a friend. An old friend; we haven't talked in years, but he might be able to do something with this. Hang tight, Bonnie. Let me see what I can do here."

  He left the reception area, still bouncing the photos in his hands and muttering to himself. Bonnie uncrossed her folded fingers. They tingled painfully as blood flowed back to her white, numb fingertips.

  So Tim had "an old friend" who might be able to help; she had a new friend who could break into any apartment. In an instant she had a warm, fairy-tale vision of a Gotham City where almost everybody knew somebody (or was somebody) who wasn't what they seemed to be, and everybody who knew a secret, kept that secret the way she'd keep Selina Kyle's Catwoman secret.

  Selina had to be Catwoman. They were the same size and build. Their eyes were the same color. Their voice was the same and they shared many gestures and expressions. It was easier to believe that Selina and Catwoman were one and the same person than it was to believe there were two completely different people who had so much in common. Bonnie would keep Selina's secret because secrets were mysterious and exciting and Selina was the most exciting, mysterious person Bonnie could imagine.

  There were other reasons for keeping Selina's secret---not the least of which was that neither Selina nor Catwoman had put in an appearance since the adventure in Eddie Lobb's apartment. All weekend while she developed the film and made the prints, she had been distracted by day with the hope that a dark-haired woman in decrepit, thrift-shop clothes would knock on her door. By night, Bonnie listened for the sound of steel claws on the window glass.

  Bonnie's disappointment was a palpable weight in her stomach. She knew the world wasn't a fairy tale. She regularly surrendered her illusions when the harsh light of reality revealed them to be fantasies. But she didn't like doing it. She was prepared to accept that Selina would never show up again, just as she was already preparing herself to accept that Tim would hand her back the photos and his regrets that his old friend couldn't do anything about Eddie Lobb. But they would be bitter pills to swallow, and she'd put it off as long as she could.

  All day she waited for the director to appear with a big grin on his face, or for Selina to scowl into the security camera. The director left early, without saying a word. Everyone else left at five, and shortly after six Bonnie got ready to leave herself. Feeling as lonely and miserable as she'd felt since she'd waved good-bye to her parents, she gathered up her "Warriors"-emblazoned coffee thermos and ecologically correct reusable lunch sack and stowed them in a matching paper, refolded to expose the completed-in-ink crossword puzzle. The extra set of photographs---the set she'd hoped to give to Selina---had never gotten out of the bag.

  The weight in Bonnie's stomach began a nauseous decomposition. She sat down heavily in her chair, chiding herself for this sudden plunge into misery.

  It's not like we had anything in common, she told herself. Selina dresses like she lives in an attic, and Catwoman's really just a criminal. She had me breaking and entering. Me! I could've been caught. My life would have been ruined. It's better I never see either of her again. We had an adventure together, that's all.

  The prep talk didn't work; the heartache and disappointment were too fresh. But they'd work eventually, and, confident of that, Bonnie hung the canvas bag over her shoulder. Locking the Wilderness Warriors' door each night was Bonnie's responsibility, and she did it with great care, double-checking everything before she permitted herself to turn around and look at the sidewalk.

  "You really should pay more attention to what's going on around you."

  "Omygod." Utterly startled, Bonnie staggered away from the door and the voice. Her eyes said "Selina" but the rest of her was caught up in terror. "Omygod." The bag slipped from her shoulder. The straps tangled around her feet and she wound up sprawled on her rump against the garbage cans.

  Selina held out her hand. "You're a smart lady, but you sure don't belong here in Gotham City." She easily pulled Bonnie to her feet, then hung the bag back on her shoulder. "You've got a nice home, nice family in Indiana. Why on earth did you ever come to Gotham City?"

  "Why does anyone come to Gotham City?" Bonnie replied rhetorically as she brushed herself off. "This is where the excitement is. With all that niceness, Indiana's terminally boring."

  Selina had nothing to say. She had Bonnie didn't actually come from different worlds. In all the little towns like the one Bonnie was from, there was a downwind neighborhood where the children of the town's losers grew up to become the next generation of losers. Selina came from such a neighborhood. Bonnie, on the other hand, lived on the hill with the respected folks. The only time respected folks saw the losers was before Christmas when a church delivered a twenty-pound ham with all the trimmings to the Kyle family's ramshackle front porch.

  Selina still hated ham. She wanted to hate Bonnie, but the fire wouldn't catch.

  "Did you get the pictures developed?" she asked with just a trace of hostility.

  "I developed all the film and printed the pictures myself over the weekend. There were too many to be effective---that always happen---but you don't know which ones will work until you've actually got the prints in your hands. I thought about it a lot, and waited a lot hoping you'd come by, but finally, last night I picked out fifteen---"

  "So you've given the pictures to your boss. Are the Wilderness Warriors going to do something, or are we S-O-L."

  "S-O-L?"

  "Shit outta luck."

  Bonnie gulped air and nodded. "We're not S-O-L yet. Tim said he had an old friend who might be able to do something. An old friend."

  The extra emphasis triggered nothing in Selina's mind, and it was her turn to be confused. "I don't like getting other people involved. Can't you think of something else we could be doing?"

  "We could be having dinner. I'm starving." She started walking down the side street toward the busier avenues. Selina followed. "And I suppose we could think of something else. Fallback plans. Contingency plans. Television! All the stations here have muckrakers. They'd love to get their teeth in a story like this. If Tim can't do anything, we could take the photos to one of the TV stations. It'd be great on TV. Of course, we'd have to break in again---with the
camcorder. You've got to have tape---"

  Selina took note of the steady stream of pedestrians on the avenue sidewalks. She wanted to hear what Bonnie had to say, but half the world would be able to eavesdrop on their conspiracy in another thirty yards.

  "Yeah, let's have dinner," she interrupted. "Inside, at your place. We can talk there. Not while we're walking---okay?"

  Bonnie agreed, and they got a bucket of flavor-of-the-month chicken wings from an establishment that didn't bear closer examination. While Bonnie clattered about in the darkroom looking for plates and napkins---"It's bad enough we've bought a bucket that can't be recycled," Bonnie said. "We don't have to compound the problem with paper plates and napkins"---Selina looked for the photographs in the canvas bag. She had to remove the newspaper first, and noticed the inked-in crossword puzzle---further proof, if any was needed, that she and Bonnie had nothing in common. She was about to toss it aside when an address caught her eye: 208 Broad Street. Unfolding the paper, she began to read.

  It seemed that the gunshot-riddled body found in the doorway of that address was causing an international fuss. The man had been identified as Stepan Kindegilen. And those portions of the old Soviet Union now known as Russia and Moldova were demanding custody of the corpse. The two republics were hurling diplomatic insults at each other, the texts of which Bonnie's paper printed in full.

  "Can you figure this out?" Selina demanded when Bonnie emerged from the darkroom with an armful of plates and cloth. "My eyes say English, but my brain says garbage."