Catwoman - Tiger Hunt
Page 19
"Keep the change."
"Thanks." The cabby rolled the bill with the hand that never touched the steering wheel and tucked it into his shirt pocket. "You know, you don't look so good. You sure you don't want me to get closer?"
"The fresh air'll do me good," Tiger replied with a thin-lipped smile. Feeling returned to his shoulder as he got out of the cab. He relieved the pain by slamming the door. The cabby told him to go to hell.
Tiger hoped that this wasn't going to happen, but hope was fading.
Television vans were double-and triple-parked. None of them was big enough to be the boss's, but Tiger approached them cautiously just the same. There was no reason to panic, Tiger told himself as he neared the end of the line of vans and the start of the police cars. He'd had a bad day---a disastrous, catastrophic day---but nothing he did would justify this media circus.
"Can you move to one side, buddy? We're trying to film here."
A harried technician raised his hand at Tiger's wounded shoulder. Tiger backpedaled, but stayed in the crowd as the movie-star-handsome reporter called for a sound and light check. He couldn't keep from holding his breath as the tape began to roll.
"Who is Eddie---Tiger---Lobb? In one night he's gone from being a precinct nuisance to worldwide notoriety. Two things are clear. First, as the nation and the world saw earlier today, Eddie Lobb turned his Gotham City home into a conservationist's worst nightmare. And second, he was a major factor in the Pier 23 shoot-out that left one policeman dead, two injured, and made Bessarabia a household word. But who is Eddie---Tiger---Lobb? With me now is Ramon Diaz, the doorman here at the Keystone Condominiums---"
The reporter paused dramatically. Tiger was seized with fear. Rayme would recognize him standing here at the front of the crowd and it would be as good as over. The pause lengthened uncomfortably.
"Where the hell is he? Where's the little guy? Stop rolling."
Tiger recognized an eleventh-hour reprieve when he got one. He melted back through the crowd. An all-too-human part of him refused to believe this was happening. Then a gap opened in the crowd farther up the block and he looked into the back of a moving truck. All his tigers were in there, jumbled together without any respect or order. They'd never forgive him for this. They'd destroy him. He was as good as dead. He'd have been better off staying in the river and letting the tide take him out to sea.
All the same, turning himself in to the dozens of waiting policemen never occurred to Eddie Lobb. If he had to die, he was going to die the way he'd lived, on the waterfront streets, not rotting in some jail. Miraculously, his mind had cleared and his shoulder was pain-free. Tiger had no difficulty slipping back down the block and hailing another cab.
"Take me over to the docks," he told the driver.
He got out at Pier 23---the old Blue Star Line. It was quiet, nothing to show for all the excitement. The Connection would survive. Tiger admitted---for the first and only time---that he wasn't a big enough man in the organization to take his boss down with him. But Pier 23 was as dead as he was. The boss would shut down all the operations that touched it. He stared at it awhile---a man needed to set things in his memory, even when he knew he wasn't going to be remembering anything pretty soon. Then he ambled over to his favorite bar and sat at his favorite table.
"Hey, Tiger---you don't look so good."
One of the Pier 23 stevedores made himself comfortable in the chair opposite Eddie.
"Things went bad. You heard."
"Yeah, I heard. Tough break, Tiger. People been comin' in askin' about you."
"Cops?"
"Yeah, cops... and people. They gave me a message to give you, if you should show up."
"So, give."
"They says if you want to make things square again, you go over to the place on Broad Street. There, I give you the message. I give you a piece of advice, too---don't go over there, Tiger. Get outta Gotham City. There must be a hundred places you could go."
"I ain't paying for advice, Jack."
The stevedore got up from the table. "Then it's been swell knowing you." He walked away.
Tiger finished his beer and left another twenty on the table to pay for it. The place on Broad Street; he knew where that was. The clarity that had come upon him by the Keystone had been dulled a bit by the beer. His shoulder was throbbing again and he was tired, too tired to go around the corner to the place on Broad Street. Tiger decided to return to the waterfront one last time. When the tide changed he'd make the final journey. It seemed that all the nearby buildings had eyes when he left the bar. Maybe the boss was going to have him popped on the street. He forced the muscles in his back to relax. The word was that it didn't hurt at all if you were relaxed.
Batman paid little attention to the dead man as he walked past. He was watching the roofs and the shadows for some telltale glimmer of movement that would reveal Catwoman's hiding place. A woman wearing sunglasses and a bright floral print dress stepped out of a doorway. She didn't seem the right type, but she was carrying a large purse and she was following Tiger. Batman was armored within his costume. He allowed himself the hope that Catwoman would be similarly concealed when he found her. It would be easier for them both if they handled this professionally. The woman changed her bearings and headed for the parked cars. Batman combed the shadows again.
The days were lengthening and getting warm. Batman was forcibly reminded that the black polymer was a heat sponge and unpleasant to wear in the sunlight. He'd guessed Tiger's intention of sitting on a piling until the tide changed again, which wouldn't happen until after sunset. Catwoman wasn't likely to make her approach in broad daylight. The Wayne Foundation owned a building not far from here where Batman maintained a safe house. Instinct and logic agreed that he could afford to snatch a couple hours of naptime. He didn't owe Tiger anything, although the scar-faced man wouldn't be looking at a death sentence if their paths hadn't crossed. He didn't owe anything to Catwoman, either. But he stayed where he was, dulling his senses to the heat, waiting for the sun to set, the tide to change, and the final act in Tiger's drama to begin.
The temperature in the cul-de-sac where Batman had hidden himself dropped noticeably when the sun dropped below the roofline of the piers. Batman shook himself out of autopilot and assured his conscious mind that nothing had changed---Tiger still sat on his piling and Batman's criminal sense still told him Catwoman was near. Shadows lengthened and a scattering of streetlights sizzled to life. Isolated pools of halogen light emerged from the twilight. There was a movement, a shadow within a shadow, at the front of the pier nearest to Tiger. Batman became fully alert.
Tiger began moving. So did the shadow. So did Batman. They moved together toward Broad Street. Tiger started down the middle of the street. A piece of shadow separated from the piers. Batman adjusted his course for an intercept once she reached Broad Street. She slashed at his face when he forced her against a wall. The mask took the brunt of it, but one claw had found its mark and he felt a warm trickle across his cheek.
"It's over," Batman told her. He locked his hands firmly over her wrists and held the vicious hooks at arm's length.
Catwoman's face contorted with hate and fury. The twin passions stripped away her ability to speak. She hissed and growled like the alley animal she pretended to be. They were close enough to taste each other's breath.
"Do you want to die with him? He'd like that. He still thinks you're on his side---a figment of his 'tiger spirit.' "
Batman's arms were longer; when he straightened them, she couldn't move. The raw rage in Catwoman's face was tempered with fear. She couldn't take him in a fair fight. So she lashed out with her boots against his shins and drove her knee into his crotch. He bore the assault stoically, but he released her wrists. She made a bolt for the building Eddie had entered just as the ground lurched beneath her feet. She stood flat-footed, not believing her eyes, as the walls of 208 Broad Street bulged outward.
"Omygod," she whispered, sounding exactly like Bonnie.
Catw
oman was hit from behind, not from the front, and spun around before the building blew itself to pieces. She was in the air, then she was in the dark, crushed flat against the asphalt pavement and barely able to breathe. For a moment Selina had no sense of her body. She feared the worst, then nerves from her fingers to her feet tingled and she knew she was all right. She thrashed free of the debris pinning her to the ground---bricks, mortar, wood, Batman. There was a wall of fire where 208 Broad Street had been. A gassy smell lingered in the air. The danger of another explosion was very real.
Her stunned consciousness finally deciphered what was lying at her feet. She planted her claws in the polymer armor and flipped Batman onto his back. His eyes were open and empty. His chest was heaving, but he wasn't making any noise. Neither was the fire. Selina realized the blast had deafened her. She screamed and felt the sound in her throat, but not in her ears. She turned and ran.
Chapter Twenty
Bonnie got Selina to a doctor, who assured her, in writing, that her hearing loss was temporary. Bonnie also invaded the East End with an armload of uptown take-out food and a bottle of the robust red wine that came in straw-wrapped bottles.
"You look like a ragpicker," Selina said when she opened the door. She spoke slowly and carefully. Her hearing was already partly restored, but she had a tendency to talk too loudly and her own voice sometimes echoed confusingly in her ears.
Bonnie said something Selina didn't catch on her way to the kitchen counter.
"What?"
"I look the way you always look," she repeated.
"That's no excuse."
Selina was uncomfortable at first. She expected Bonnie to do or say something that would reveal her contempt for the East End way of life. But Selina had never gone to college and lived off campus. Selina rarely drank, either. All her life she'd been surrounded by the ravages of alcoholism. There had been times when her only source of pride was the knowledge that she wasn't a drunk. Bonnie wasn't afraid of a glass of wine, and with Bonnie sprawled on the floor, playing with the gray tiger kitten and talking her usual blue streak, Selina dared tiny sips from a jelly glass.
The evening was the most pure, simple fun Selina had had with another person since---well, at least since she arrived in Gotham City. She told Bonnie the kitten was hers, if she wanted to take him home and give him a name. She did. The visit ended early, while Bonnie, carrying the kitten in a cardboard box, still had a prayer of hailing a taxicab on the avenues. Selina waved good-bye and returned home, still feeling warm and mellow.
"Maybe I shouldn't go out," she said to the cats. "Maybe I should just stay home and get some sleep."
The cats ignored her, and she dug Catwoman's costume out from under the bed. She had no fixed destination in mind, but wasn't surprised when she found herself looking at the Keystone's wedding-cake facade. The excitement was long over and just about forgotten. Somebody had given the police an anonymous tip about the Broad Street explosion, and the Federal Prosecutors had to start looking for another sleazeball to squeeze.
Catwoman wasn't sure what she expected to find---bare walls, new tenants---when she raised the window and slipped in behind the drapes. The mirror-ceiling bedroom had been searched, but not trashed. The wardrobe doors were shut and locked. It was clear to Catwoman, after that, why she'd come. She got out her picks. The doors swung open. The box was there. She lifted it out. It was filled with strands of pearls and semiprecious stones---none worth the trouble of fencing, so she left them in the box's place and closed the doors.
Somebody should tell the nuns to tell Rose that it was safe to go home again.
Selina had what she'd come for. The only other thing she was interested in---the velvet painting of the prowling tiger in the living room---was far too big to think about. She should have called it a night and headed home, but curiosity, as always, got the better of her and she opened the corridor door.
The door to Tiger's relic room lay on its side, blocking the closets. More to the point, a night-light's worth of foot-candles was spilling out of the room itself. Holding the box tightly against her side, Catwoman took a peek.
"I knew you would come. Sooner or later."
Selina was startled. She thought---hoped---her ears were playing tricks on her, but there he was in full regalia silhouetted against an undraped window. She put her right foot behind her left, and measured the distance to the gouged door frame with her outstretched hand.
"Don't go. I wanted to tell you that I didn't understand until it was too late. I knew you were involved, but I thought it was the icon, strictly business. I didn't know about this."
Eddie Lobb's sanctuary had been stripped to the bare walls, which concentrated the sound of Batman's voice, making it easy for her to hear him.
"What difference would it have made? Would you have let me have him? Ever?" The questions were as sharp as the claws she thrust into the wood behind her.
Batman gave them the decency of a moment's thought and an honest answer. "No. I wanted Tiger's boss. I still do. You were trying to destroy him. I had to stop you, if I could."
"You couldn't. He's dead and the trail's gone cold. I won."
Another pause. "In a way you did, I suppose. But you were lucky. Someday your luck will go sour."
"I'll take my chances."
"You're alone, Catwoman. You've got no one. It doesn't have to be that way."
Damn her quirky hearing! Catwoman swallowed hard and felt her ears pop. It didn't help. She couldn't hear all the nuances in Batman's voice. She couldn't be certain what he meant.
"I'm doing fine," she said defensively.
"You're not like the others. You don't have to wind up at the end of a blind alley."
Catwoman shifted her weight onto her right foot. This conversation was the only thing going up a blind alley. "Don't waste your time worrying about me," she snarled.
And was gone.
Batman let his breath out slowly. Alfred had warned him that Catwoman wasn't going to be persuaded by a halfhearted offer of friendship. It was all or nothing with cats. With Bruce Wayne, "all" went to Batman and there was nothing left over. He gave her enough time to get clear of the building before leaving the room himself.
Then the phone rang. The line was supposed to be dead. Bruce Wayne was curious. He picked it up.
"Is that you, Batman?" The voice was bland. "Come to gloat over your successes? You've made a nuisance of yourself, but you're not even close. Eddie Lobb, Tiger, had reached the end of his usefulness. You did me a favor. We're even again. There's no need for us to interfere with each other."
"We're not even. We never were. I know who you are, and I'm going to bring you down."
"Don't be a fool, Batman. You're not in my league."
"I'm not a fool, Mattheson. I'm Batman."
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