They all stared back at Max. What’s more, they snickered. But then the snickering stopped, replaced by a respectful silence, as if all the circus people were expecting something.
Max could hear the hum of a huge electrical generator in the background, and saw where it powered a huge air conditioner at the other end of the room. Neither one of them looked very safe; the air conditioner was covered with grime, and he could see sparks flying from the generator even from his vantage point.
And to either side of the generator and air conditioner, there were—penguins.
Even more penguins?
There were hundreds of the critters. Big penguins and small penguins, walking and sitting and flapping and playing across the ice. There were penguins all over this place!
Max heard another sound beyond the generator, a loud dripping sound.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He turned to his left. There, among the penguins, was a particularly large one, holding an open umbrella. Max watched the drops of water hit the black fabric with a sinister regularity.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
An umbrella?
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The penguin with the umbrella waddled forward, beyond the falling water. And not only was this bird big, but Max could swear it was wearing a union suit.
A union suit?
Yes, it was tattered and filthy, but it was a union suit. And the bird wore a pair of scuffed and well-worn shoes. Maybe, Max thought, he had simply lost his mind. It would be the simplest explanation.
It got worse. The bird closed the umbrella.
It wasn’t a penguin.
It was The Penguin.
A small, rotund creature with beady eyes and a beaklike nose stared back at Max. He looked like nothing so much as one of the fowls from which he got his name. The Penguin. The star of the tabloids. The legendary bird-beast from beneath the streets.
The Penguin grinned.
“Hi,” he remarked.
Max opened his mouth to scream again, but it was beyond him. No sound came out at all.
“I believe the word you’re looking for is”—The Penguin paused to take a breath—“AAAAUUUGGGHHH!”
Max still didn’t get anything out. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to get anything out ever again.
“Actually,” The Penguin reassured him most jovially, “this is all just a bad dream. You’re home in bed. Heavily sedated. Resting comfortably. And dying from the carcinogens you’ve personally spewed in a lifetime of profiteering. Tragic irony or poetic justice? You tell me.”
Max remembered to breathe. That helped.
“My God,” he managed. “It’s true. The Penguin. Man of the sewers. Please don’t hurt—”
“Quiet, Max!” The Penguin snapped. “What do you think, this is a conversation?”
Max quieted. The Penguin twirled his umbrella, pressing something down on the handle. The top of the umbrella spit a great gout of fire. The Penguin nodded happily, quite pleased with the display. He glanced again at Shreck.
“Odd as it may seem, Max, we have something in common. We’re both perceived as monsters. But somehow, you’re a well-respected monster. And I am”—he looked humbly down at his dirty suit—“to date—not.”
With that, The Penguin bent down. Max noticed he had a whole pile of umbrellas at his feet. Shreck wondered if all the others were weapons, too. The Penguin picked up a new umbrella. It was the first time the businessman had taken a good look at the birdman’s hands. Except that they only sort of looked like hands. They also sort of looked like flippers. The Penguin smiled at Max’s attention, and pointed the umbrella as if this one might shoot something else.
Max almost flinched. That wasn’t a pile of umbrellas at The Penguin’s feet. It was a whole arsenal!
But Max hadn’t gotten where he was today by falling apart in front of his adversaries. If he was going to get out of this, he had to talk to The Penguin as an equal, even if it was monster to monster.
“Frankly,” he said firmly, “I think that reputation is a bum rap. I’m a businessman. Tough, yes. Shrewd, okay. But that doesn’t make me a monster—”
“Don’t embarrass yourself, Max,” The Penguin interrupted. “I know all about you. What you hide, I discover. What you put in your toilet, I put on my mantel.” He smiled and patted his rotund belly. “Get the picture?”
He had what Max put in his toilet? Max supposed that was one advantage of living in the sewers. But just how literally was he supposed to take this guy?
The Penguin picked up another umbrella and opened it, showing a bright spiral design. It looked sort of like those “hypno-disks” Max used to see in comics and magazines when he was a boy.
And he was worried about some freak who used this kind of gimmick? Max couldn’t help but be a little condescending. “What,” he asked, “is that supposed to hypnotize me?”
“No,” The Penguin replied jovially, “just give you a splitting headache.”
“Well,” Max replied with gathering confidence, “it’s not working.”
The Penguin grinned as he pointed the head of the umbrella at the businessman. There was an explosion as Max saw a spout of flame come from the umbrella’s barrel.
A gunshot! Max clutched at his chest. Had he been hit?
“You big baby!” The Penguin chided as he waved the umbrella. “Just blanks. Would I go to all this trouble tonight just to kill you? No, I have an entirely other purpose.”
With that remark, all trace of mirth disappeared from The Penguin’s countenance. He looked serious, solemn, almost respectable.
“I’m ready, Max,” he continued, his voice much less assured than before. “I’ve been lingering down here too long.” He sighed. “I’m starting to like the smell. Bad sign.”
He looked into Max’s eyes with his own beady orbs. “It’s high time for me to ascend. To reemerge. With your help, Max, your know-how, your savvy, your acumen.”
He paused and looked to his circus cronies, who appeared genuinely moved by his admissions.
“I wasn’t born in a sewer, you know. I come from—” He looked up toward some place far above their current location. “Like you,” The Penguin continued forcefully. “And, like you, I want some respect—a recognition of my basic humanity—an occasional breeze!”
A couple of the circus gang seemed on the verge of tears.
“Most of all,” The Penguin went on, his own voice almost breaking, “I want to find out who I am. By finding my parents. Learning my human name. Simple stuff that the good people of Gotham take for granted!”
Max still couldn’t see this. “And exactly why am I going to help you?”
The Penguin held out his hand. One of his cronies gave him what must have once been a bright red Christmas stocking, before it got covered by greenish gunk. Oddly enough, it was exactly the same size and shape as those stockings that Max’s aged grandmother had knitted for their mantel.
No, Shreck thought. It was a coincidence that this particular stocking looked so familiar. There was a name stitched on the stocking. He had to squint to make it out beneath the grime. The name was “Max.”
“Well,” The Penguin explained, “let’s start with a batch of toxic waste from your clean textile plant.” He pulled a rusty Thermos from the stocking and unscrewed the cap. “There’s a whole lagoon of this crud in the back—”
He poured out a thick goo from the Thermos onto the ice-covered table. The goo sizzled where it hit.
Who did this guy think he was trying to blackmail?
“Yawn,” Max replied in great disinterest. “That could have come from anywhere.”
“What about the documents that prove you own half the firetraps in Gotham?”
Max raised a single bored eyebrow. “If there were such documents—and that is not an admission—I would have seen to it that they were shredded.”
The Penguin again held out his hand. This time, one of the circus goons gave him a stack of something shiny. Max stared.
They looked like nothing so much as a stack of shredded papers stuck together with a vast quantity of transparent tape.
“A lot of tape and a little patience make all the difference,” The Penguin remarked proudly. “By the way, how’s Fred Adkins, your old partner?”
Max could feel his cool slipping away.
“Fred,” he murmured.
Anyone could find out about his chemical plant.
“Fred?” he asked nonchalantly.
And it looked like this guy might have reassembled a couple of embarrassing documents.
But how could he know about Fred?
“He’s—uh—” Max managed at last, “actually, he’s been on an extended vacation, and—”
The Penguin nodded happily and reached under the icy table. He pulled out what looked like a human hand, severed at the wrist.
“Hi, Max!” The Penguin continued, talking from the side of his mouth like some bad ventriloquist. “Remember me? I’m Fred’s hand!”
But, Max thought, how could he have that? The hand should have been disposed of!
He caught himself. Just like the chemical waste should have been flushed away, and the shredded papers should have been incinerated. The Penguin obviously was the master of Max’s refuse. And he looked like he might be the master of Max’s life.
The Penguin leaned toward Max. “Want to greet any other body parts? Or stroll down memory lane with torn-up, kinky Polaroids? Failed urine tests? Remember, Max. You flush it, I flaunt it!”
As cold as it was down here, Max found himself sweating. He did his best to smile.
“You know what, Mr. Penguin, sir?” he asked in his best business voice. “I think perhaps I could help orchestrate a little welcome-home scenario for you. And once we’re both back home, perhaps we can scratch each other’s backs.”
That seemed to please the birdman greatly. “You won’t regret this, Mr. Shreck.” The Penguin put out his hand.
Max grabbed it and did his best to shake it heartily. But not only did The Penguin’s hand look pasty and peculiar, it was also as cold as death.
The Penguin stepped back, but Max still held the hand. He looked down at what he held.
It wasn’t The Penguin’s hand. It was Fred’s.
The circus gang laughed as if this were the funniest thing in the world. Max gingerly let go of the hand and let it fall to the table.
After a minute, Max laughed, too, like his life depended on it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Max was back in the open, out in Gotham Plaza, just like he had been the day before. Except that everything had changed. The businessman smiled and waved to the crowd, and prayed that everything went according to plan.
This time, there wasn’t much of a crowd beyond a few curiosity seekers. The smaller stores here had all been trashed. Even Shreck’s Department Store had sustained some damage. For now, the shoppers would have to go elsewhere. But in their place were all the TV news-cams with their crews and well-groomed on-the-spot reporters.
And the Mayor was here as well. That was one thing you could depend on with His Honor the Mayor; he never missed a photo opportunity. And when Max suggested that the Mayor might bring his wife and infant son along so that he could make a point about family safety, His Honor had leapt at the suggestion. So it was that Max solemnly walked beside the Mayor and his family, all four of them caught in the glow of TV lights, while the Mayor talked at never-ending length to reporters, and Max waited to see if all this would work. They paused before the speaker’s platform.
“I tell you this,” the Mayor was currently remarking in the most committed of tones, “not just as an official, but as a husband and father.” He raised a warning finger above his head to drive home his point. “Last night’s eruption of lawlessness will never happ—”
An acrobat somersaulted from behind the ravaged Christmas tree, straight for the Mayor’s wife, snatching the baby from her arms with a single fluid motion. The circus performer leapt back onto the platform, and held the baby aloft as if he were accepting an award.
“I’m not one for speeches,” he remarked with a broad grin, “so I’ll just say ‘Thanks!’ ”
The Mayor lunged for the acrobat, who calmly kicked His Honor in the chest. His Honor crumpled as the acrobat jumped from the platform and raced through the astonished crowd until—
He catapulted himself into an open manhole.
Max pushed his way forward as the crowd gathered around the dark hole in the street. There was a moment of silence, then noise erupted from below.
“Hey!” someone yelled from down below. “Oww! Get away! Ouch!” The cries of pain were accompanied by a heavy thumping sound, as if someone was being soundly thrashed.
The crowd gasped as the acrobat, battered and bruised with clothing torn, dragged himself from the manhole and ran rather unsteadily—but still very quickly—away through the throng.
No one thought to stop him. He no longer held the baby. And there was something else down in that manhole.
“Stand back!” someone in the crowd yelled.
“My God, look!” another voice cried.
For, out of the darkness, the Mayor’s child was being raised up into the light. The crowd gasped. How could such a thing be? It was almost magic. But no, he was being held aloft by someone—or something.
A flipper emerged from the manhole, followed by the portly visage of The Penguin!
The crowd cheered.
The Penguin smiled.
Max had to admit, it couldn’t have gone better if he had planned it himself.
Which, after all, he had.
Alfred had paused in his hanging of ornaments on the tree. It was obvious from his expression that he didn’t believe this. But then, Bruce Wayne didn’t believe it either.
“This morning’s miracle,” the man on the screen intoned solemnly. “Gotham will never forget.”
The TV showed the abduction of the Mayor’s baby, and the supposed miracle of his rescue by The Penguin, who rose out of the sewer on top of the strangest of vehicles, a contraption that looked like nothing so much as a large rubber duck. The camera zoomed in on the rescuer.
“That’s him,” the announcer continued as if he saw large duck vehicles every day. “The shadowy, much rumored penguin man of the sewers, arisen. Until today, he’d been another tabloid myth, alongside the Abominable Snowman and the Loch Ness Monster.”
The Mayor’s wife was in tears as she grabbed her baby back. She swallowed hard, but somehow managed to embrace the man, or whatever it was, called The Penguin, who certainly looked as if he had spent his life in the sewers, and no doubt smelled accordingly. The Penguin, for his part, blinked as if he could not get used to the brightness of the light.
“But now,” the announcer again remarked, “this bashful man-beast can proudly take his place alongside our own legendary Batman.”
The Mayor reached out to shake The Penguin’s hand. But somehow, Max Shreck had gotten in the way, and now stood beaming by The Penguin, patting him heartily on the back.
“Gotham’s leading citizen, Max Shreck,” the announcer droned on, “had been on a fact-finding mission in Gotham Plaza.”
Shreck bent down to whisper something encouraging in The Penguin’s ear. The Penguin, embarrassed, took a little bow. The crowd cheered wildly. Loudspeakers in the plaza began to play “Joy to the World.”
The TV picture shifted to a live interview with the new hero. The Penguin shielded his eyes with a small, frayed umbrella as he spoke in a shy and halting voice:
“All I want in return”—he blinked at the camera—“is the chance to—to find my folks. Find out who they are—and thusly, who I am—and, then, with my parents, just—try to understand why”—he paused to take a ragged breath—“why they did what I guess they had to do, to a child who was born a little—different. A child who spent his first Christmas, and many since, in a sewer.”
His parents, Bruce thought.
Mother. Father. A scream. A guns
hot. Lost to him forever.
“Mr. Wayne,” Alfred remarked softly. “Is something wrong?”
Bruce looked up to where the butler had returned to trimming the tree. Bruce shook his head, as much to clear it as to indicate the negative.
“No, nothing,” he began, “ah—his parents—I—” He took a deep breath. “I hope he finds them.”
Alfred heartily agreed as he returned to his tree-trimming duties. Bruce turned back to the television. So The Penguin had lost his mother and father. Or maybe, his mother and father had lost him.
Max smiled most pleasantly from where he stood within the entry way of the Gotham Hall of Records. A short flight of steps beyond, a whole cordon of police held back dozens of reporters, hungry for a story.
“What do you think he’ll do to his mom and dad when he finds them?” a reporter asked near the door.
“What would you do to your ma and pa,” another reporter replied sarcastically, “if they flushed you down the poop-chute?”
Somehow, one of the reporters had gotten around the cordon, and was quietly mounting the steps. Max snapped his fingers, and a pair of his personal Shreck security guards stepped by him to intercept the intruder.
They grabbed the reporter by the elbows.
“Mr. Penguin is not to be disturbed,” one of the guards remarked as he turned the reporter back down the steps.
“The Hall of Records is a public place!” the reporter yelled back in professional outrage. “You’re violating the First Amendment, abridging the freedom of the press—”
This had gone far enough. Max waved for his own phalanx of reporters to follow him outside. Now he’d give them the story he’d promised.
As he stepped forward, he waved to the guards to let their escort stay on the steps for the moment.
“What about the freedom to rediscover your roots,” Max asked the angry reporter as all the other newsmen around him jotted down his every word, “with dignity, in privacy?”
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