Wayne of Gotham

by Tracy Hickman

  “You do it, Salvatore,” one of the thin hitmen said through chattering teeth.

  “Like hell, Jonesy!” Salvatore barked back. “I ain’t walking out for no guys that’s already dead.”

  “I thought that was the whole point of robbing the Gotham National in the first place.” The fat killer called Kelly the Kelvinator was sweating despite the cold. “Lure these Apocalypse jerks here with the bait and then whack ’em with heat from all the mobs at the same time. Bye-bye Apocalypse and back to business as usual.”

  The corrugated steel roofing gave a light rattle from above. Everyone in the alley ducked at the sound.

  “Yeah,” Salvatore countered, “well, it looks like the Apocalypse isn’t following the plan.”

  “Quit flapping your gums and reload,” Julius barked. He was beginning to feel a little light-headed. “We gotta find a way outta here.”

  “Who done that to you, boss?” Salvatore asked, nodding at the damaged shoulder.

  “That Disciple jerk…I think,” Julius moaned, then grinned. “I put a slug in him, though, before he took my Browning and turned it on me. If I hadn’t taken a dive off the roof into that dumpster, my number might have been up.”

  “It might be yet, boss, if we don’t get that taken care of,” Jonesy said. “You’re leakin’ like a sieve. Still, you’re lucky: that Disciple don’t ever let anyone walk away in one piece—literally.”

  “That one they call Chanteuse,” said Mikey, a weasel-faced thug. “I heard she leaves like a Tarot card on each guy she kills.”

  “Nah, that’s that Fate chick,” Salvatore snapped. “Chanteuse is the one with the murderous voice. “She’s, like, one of them Greek sirens or something.”

  “Listen to you guys,” Julius spat, his spittle tinged with a streak of his blood. “A bunch of mama’s boys scared of their shadows. There’s only four of them, you dumb apes. You can’t whack four creeps? Two of them are broads, for hell’s sake!”

  “What’s the name of that other mug?” Kelly asked.

  “Let’s see,” the weasel sniffed. “Disciple, Chanteuse, Fate, and…what’s his name—”

  Suddenly, a long scythe tore through the darkness from above, the blade impaling the fat killer through the chest and against the wooden wall of the milk-bottle booth. Impossibly, the blade dragged the fat Kelly upward over the edge of the roof, where the black robes and dark hood of death incarnate stood.

  “REAPER!” The weasel shouted, his shotgun suddenly raised and barking into the darkness above. A ragged chorus of machine-gun fire joined in, but there was nothing there to shoot.

  The fat killer was gone.

  “Get me outta here!” Julius shouted and then coughed. More blood came into his mouth and he spit it out. He tried to run across the midway, but his legs felt loose and rubbery beneath him. Salvatore grabbed his boss, throwing his shoulder under his arm and dragging him toward the fun house across the way. Julius heard the sounds of the machine guns following behind him. A high-pitched scream tore above the sound of the gunfire as Joey flew past Julius, slamming into the wall next to the entrance.

  Salvatore busted down the entrance door with a single kick and dragged Julius inside. The remaining Moxon hitmen pushed their way through the door after them…tumbling into a mirror maze.

  Guns raised, all they could see around them were reflections of themselves seemingly going into forever. The stark light of the overhead bulb was repeating in all directions.

  “May…maybe we should go back, boss,” Salvatore stammered.

  “Out there?” Julius snorted. “It’s just a kid’s maze, Sal! We’ll go out the back and blow this whole scene.”

  They plunged into the maze together, threatened on all sides by their own reflections. The shifting images with the raised weapons they saw were themselves, but now and then a face would appear that was not their own, vanishing so quickly it was impossible to tell if the image had been real or an illusion of their own fears.

  “Hey, boss?” whispered the weasel.

  “What is it, Mikey?” Julius asked.

  “You hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  He did hear something. A high, reedy voice was echoing through the mirrors.

  “Michael! Please help me!” the voice pleaded. “I’m so afraid! What do they want, Michael? I don’t know what they want!”

  “Ma?” Mikey the Weasel asked. “Boss! They got Ma!”

  “What are you talkin’ about?” Julius stared at the slim thug. “What would your ma be doing in this nuthouse?”

  “MA!” Mikey shouted. “It’s my ma, boss! They got her. I’m coming, Ma! Don’t you worry, Ma, I’m coming!”

  Mikey plunged down a side corridor in the maze, his reflection scattering in all directions. In a moment, he vanished.

  “You want I should get him, boss?” said the thin man with chattering teeth.

  A deathly scream suddenly rattled among the mirrors.

  “I don’t think so,” Julius answered.

  A gunshot rang out, followed by the sound of shattering glass. Then a burst of machine-gun fire rang out.

  The man with the chattering teeth lurched forward, bloody patches exploding across his back. He fell into the mirror, smashing it as it scattered at his feet.

  Guns suddenly began firing everywhere. Julius dropped painfully to the ground as Salvatore shielded him. Several bodies fell through the collapsing mirrors in front of them.

  “Knock it off!” Julius shouted to his own men, but it took them several more rounds before they were able to stop.

  “Hey, boss, check this out,” Salvatore said.

  Julius stared at the bodies on the floor in front of him. “Who are these guys?”

  “They’re Falcone’s boys,” Salvatore said, biting his lip. “And that one over there is one of Rossetti’s. Looks like we got company, boss.”

  “We’ve been set up—all of us,” Julius seethed. “Those Apocalypse creeps have us butchering each other for them! Well, I’m tired of this game and I don’t want to play anymore!”

  Julius staggered to his feet.

  “Everybody out there—down!” he shouted. “Sal, our luck can’t get no worse. Break me a few mirrors!”

  Salvatore grinned, raising up his drum-fed Thompson. It started to spray bullets and mirror shards began to fall like rain.

  Salvatore eased Julius into the back of the Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special. Julius knew the upholstery in the back would be ruined by his blood, but he could afford it.

  If I live that long.

  He had a terrible headache and was having trouble concentrating. Salvatore was saying something to him, but it was hard for him to hear. He desperately wanted to sleep but knew somehow that if he did, it would be for the last time.

  “You want we should take you to Gotham Hospital, boss?” Salvatore repeated in his face as though Julius were deaf.

  “No! We might as well walk into the DA’s office and start singing!” Julius snapped. The pain was overwhelming. “Who’s that doctor Lewis is always going on about? That rich friend of his?”

  “Rains…Bains…” Salvatore stammered.

  “Wayne!” Julius said. “Dr. Thomas Wayne, old Pat Wayne’s kid. He can patch me up and we can keep one step ahead of the bulls.”

  “But, where we gonna find him, boss?” Salvatore shrugged.

  “That party,” Julius said, grabbing Salvatore by the collar. “Lewis was going to some big-shot fancy party at the Kane Mansion tonight. Wayne will be there—along with every other money-spoiled snob of Gotham. That’s where we’ll find him. How many boys we got left?”

  “Counting us?” Salvatore glanced around outside the car. “Ten…maybe fifteen here now. They’re all piled into a couple of cars behind us like clowns in a circus.”

  “That’s enough to handle the Hoi polloi,” Moxon smiled. “Tell the boys we’re going to crash a party over at the Kane Mansion.”

  “You want me to go out there?” Salvatore g
aped.

  “Am I talkin’ to myself?” Moxon barked through the pain. “I’m bleeding here! Just do it!”

  Salvatore jerked on the handle, shoving the door open as fast as he could manage. It rebounded, but the big thug was already clear of it, running back toward the next sedan. He shouted at the third car idling behind and was glad to see the windows of both cars roll down slightly to hear him. He did not want to have to stand out in the open and say it twice.

  “Moxon says we’re going to the party at the Kane Mansion!” he shouted, glancing at the dark midway buildings that seemed too close for comfort.

  “Where’s this Kane place?” called the driver of the third car. His voice sounded a staccato, like his teeth were chattering.

  “It’s in Bristol,” Salvatore shouted back. This was taking too long for his liking. “Read the map, knucklehead, and stay on our bumper!”

  “But why this Kane place?” the driver persisted.

  “There’s a doc there by the name of Wayne who’s gonna patch up the boss,” Salvatore answered over his shoulder as he rushed back to Moxon’s car. “Or else we’re gonna make a few new openings available among the kings of High Society.”

  From a hidden spot nearly twenty feet away, the entire conversation had been overheard.

  * * *

  Wayne Manor / Bristol / 11:30 p.m. / October 25, 1958

  Thomas examined the costume that had been carefully laid out on the divan in the dressing room of his east-wing suite. It had been his parents’ inviolate territory when he was growing up, and he still felt like an intruder for moving into the rooms. He had finished showering and had shaved once more for the evening. He wore a towel wrapped around his waist and considered just what one could do to make his attire for the evening less ridiculous.

  Thomas was uncomfortable with costumes in the first place and had asked Jarvis to secure one for him to wear to the party. The servant had assured him that the character was extremely popular, but Thomas only knew it as coming from an old 1920 silent movie that his father used to make him watch now and then when Thomas was a boy. It was about the only activity Thomas remembered doing with his father that did not involve an argument or a beating. Unfortunately, this costume had been assembled incorrectly, with tights and trunks rather than the proper leggings and with a cape that looked more like something Dracula might wear than a caballero. Unlike everyone else, Thomas didn’t have much time for television but he knew everyone at the hospital liked to talk about Westerns. The mask was a hooded cowl in the style of the old Fairbanks films. To Thomas’s dismay, the outfit had no cowboy hat. Worse, whoever had assembled the costume seemed to have done a rushed job of it, tossing in tall black boots and a wide leather belt more suited to a buccaneer. By the time the costume had arrived, it was too late to do anything about changing it. Perhaps, Thomas thought, he could find something more suitable than the tights and the trunks to wear under his costume.

  Thomas turned back to the mirror over the sink. There was still Burma-Shave on his face despite the new Gillette safety razor having done a much smoother job on his face. He began to sing to himself as he splashed water from the basin, rubbing off the shaving cream.

  “Good evening, Thomas” came the quiet, familiar voice.

  Thomas looked up into the mirror with a start.

  “It’s been a long, long time,” the man said, leaning on the back of the divan.

  “Denholm!” Thomas breathed, his eyes wide. He wondered how Denholm Sinclair had managed to get into the mansion…and whether he had managed to do so unnoticed.

  “Denholm? Yes, I suppose I will allow that I was Denholm Sinclair,” he said. “It pains me to admit it, though…pains me terribly. It was a pain that you gave me, Thomas. Remember? I wasn’t the man you thought I should be…and you were going to fix me, weren’t you? And you did fix me, Thomas…you fixed me better than you could have hoped. I couldn’t be old Denny Sinclair any longer because Denny was a liar and a cheat, a guy who burned up little orphans in their beds just to cover up his extensive fraud. So I’ve become what you wanted me to be, Thomas, and I’m bringing justice down on the very vermin and predators among whom I once numbered. Denholm Sinclair is dead—I buried everything he ever was—and now I’m the man Martha Kane asked that I become. And I have you to thank for it, my dear friend. I am…so very grateful.”

  “Denholm—”

  “That’s not who I am!” the man roared, his voice startling Thomas.

  “Okay.” Thomas drew in a slow, controlled breath, holding both his palms forward and acutely aware that he was only dressed in a towel. “What should I call you, then?”

  “They call me the Disciple,” he replied, his left hand pressing against his abdomen. Thomas could see blood seeping out between his fingers.

  “The Disciple?” Wayne asked.

  “Your Disciple, Thomas,” he replied evenly. “You made me strong. You made me wise. You made me see the purpose of my existence.”

  I’ve got to get the authorities. I’ve got to buy some time.

  “What…what purpose?” Thomas asked.

  “To be the cure, Doctor!” Disciple smiled, his eyes bright. “We are the antibody of Gotham—my companions and I. We flow through the lifeblood of the city, searching for the antigens of crime and corruption, of intimidation and greed. Fate finds them, Chanteuse calls them home, and the Reaper…Well, he is always busy.”

  “And you?”

  Disciple smiled again. “Me? Why, I am the judge, the jury, and sometimes the executioner all in one.”

  Keep him talking. There’s got to be a way to get help.

  “You’ve been very busy,” Thomas continued. “Too busy if the newspaper reports are true.”

  “It’s a living,” Disciple chuckled darkly. “But it’s all been nothing compared to what’s coming tonight. Moxon, Rossetti, and even Falcone all set aside their differences tonight so they could face their common enemy, but the laugh was on them. We were ready for them. Now Moxon’s got a few slugs in him, and he’s on his way up to the Kane Mansion with what remains of his goon squad.”

  “The Kanes’?” Thomas’s mind raced. “Why would he go there?”

  “Last time I saw him he didn’t look too good,” Disciple shrugged. “I guess his little boy bragged you up to his old man. He needs a doctor who knows how to keep his mouth shut…so he’s looking for you.”

  “Oh, no,” Thomas breathed.

  “You needn’t worry, Thomas. I’ll take care of them; I’ll put them out of their misery,” Disciple said, rubbing his large powerful hands together. Blood stained his palms, fingers, and forearms. Thomas realized those stains had not all come from Denholm’s wounds. “We’re a lot alike, you and I: it’s just that my surgery is a good deal messier than yours in the end. And come to think of it, while I’m cleaning out the Moxon cancer at the Kanes’ ball, there are a few among the upper crust I think could use my attention, too…a few of them who could use a good cleaning as well.”

  The line of his moral judgment is shifting more and more toward the perfect and the ideal. If this continues, everyone at the ball could be in mortal danger—simply by not being perfect. I’ve got to stop him.

  “You…you’re hurt,” Thomas observed, pointing to the wound.

  “Can you help me, old friend?” Disciple asked in a pleading voice as he sat down on the divan next to the costume. “I seem to be in need of your help.”

  Thomas nodded. “I’ll…need to get my bag.”

  “Your bag?”

  “My medical bag. It’s downstairs. It will only take me—”

  “No,” Disciple said, shaking his head. “That’s not the help I need.”

  “But it will only take—”

  “NO!” Disciple screamed, his face suddenly purple with rage.

  Thomas shook off a chill at the dreadful sound of Disciple’s voice. The man was manic and possibly schizophrenic. Moreover, he appeared far stronger than Thomas remembered him. “All right…what do yo
u need?”

  Disciple stood up, moving carefully toward Thomas. “I need your help to exact justice on those who are unjust.”

  “How?”

  “I need to be you,” Disciple said through a Denholm Sinclair smile…and then knocked Thomas Wayne cold with a single, perfectly placed punch.

  * * *

  Batcave / Wayne Manor / Bristol / 11:39 p.m. / Present Day

  Bruce stepped up to the Batmobile on its service platform, where it was recharging. He considered fueling it but decided there was not time, and besides, the distance he had to go was not that far.

  He opened the gull-wing doors and started pulling out the components of his Batsuit. The capacitors were somewhat discharged from the previous night’s activities, but he gauged them sufficient for his needs.

  He began assembling the Batsuit around him as a knight might have donned his armor, connecting its components until it was a seamless whole. He ended with the cowl, completing his costume.

  He had a party to stop by at the abandoned Kane Mansion next door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  MASQUERADES

  * * *

  Kane Mansion / Bristol / 11:42 p.m. / Present Day

  Batman passed as a shadow beneath the porte-cochère that dominated the main entrance to Kane Mansion and moved silently up the broad, deserted steps. The main doors, long since barred, were open wide, inviting him into the dark foyer beyond.

  He slipped into the enveloping shadows, closing his eyes to get his bearings. The old foyer sprang into three-dimensional relief in his mind, a place at once familiar and alien.

  I played here as a boy. My mother would stand at the bottom of this staircase and call me down from the landing above. I always tried to slide down the wide banister, and Mother would always warn me it was too dangerous. It was a game we always played…here on these steps…

  Batman frowned in the shadows, too dark to be seen.