The Further Adventures of The Joker

by Martin H. Greenberg

  How indeed? Dark, savage creature: he seems barely human. I understood in that moment that I had embarked on the right course: force him to see himself through my eyes. Lift the mask behind which he hides. The ultimate gift. I did not expect that he would ever be grateful. But one could hope. It would be an eminently satisfactory conclusion to our long association.

  “The cops are coming.”

  I could hear the approaching siren. I could also hear loud, muffled voices. “This is our marital problem.”

  “Yeah. We’re using Carroll House. It overlooks the alley.”

  Glass exploded, and the voices became clearer. A man and woman were screaming at one another. “Wonderful,” I said. “Batman called in to settle a domestic dispute.”

  “He’s handing Shotgun over to the cops. He’s under a streetlight. I can see him pretty good and I can tell you he doesn’t like Shotgun much.” Pause. Then: “Damn.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s turning away. Paying no attention to the fight.”

  I was on my yellow phone. To Manny DeSailles, my lead bail bondsman. “They’re bringing in Juliana,” I told him. “I want him out in two hours.”

  “What’re the charges?”

  “Probably attempted robbery, assault, nothing serious.”

  “How about the victim?”

  “Maybe a little under the weather.”

  “I can’t do it in two hours.”

  “You said you could.”

  “I said I could if he didn’t hurt anybody.”

  “We can’t have everything, Manny. I want him out by three.”

  “Did he shoot anybody?”

  “No.”

  “Thank God for that. Joker, you guarantee all this?”

  “You know you can trust me, Manny. You won’t lose a dime.” I’d invested in a judge, too. Spared no expense for Batman. “Just get him out, Manny. Fast.”

  I switched back to Harry. “—in the street. She damn near got hit by a car. Nice timing, Joker: she’s good. One of the cops is trying to help her. Uh-oh, here comes Hawk. He’s got an AK-47, and he’s waving it around. Everybody’s ducking for cover.” Harry’s voice changed, and I realized he was doing some ducking himself.

  There were a couple of quick bursts, followed by sustained firing. I wonder whether there is any sound on the planet quite so restful as the rhythm of automatic fire, punctuated by screams, brakes, squealing tires, and colliding cars.

  “We got trouble,” Harry said. “One of the cops is down. Shotgun is making a run for it.”

  I picked up a pen. “He’s not supposed to do that, Harry.”

  “Reflexes, Boss. Hawk’s blazing away at traffic, and Shotgun just couldn’t let his chance go.”

  “Stop Shotgun. Tell him to get back to the police car. If he doesn’t, the whole idea goes down the drain.”

  “I’ve got no way to reach him.”

  “Then chase him down. Just do it, Harry.”

  “All right. By the way, Batman’s back. He’s beating on Hawk. I’ll get back to you in a couple minutes.”

  When Harry called again, the air was filled with sirens. “It’s okay,” he said. “I turned Shotgun over to the cops. He gave me an argument, but I told him we’d make it worth his while.”

  “Oh, yes, we will, Harry. We will certainly do that.”

  “They talked about giving me a medal for bringing him back.”

  “I hope you told them you were just another concerned citizen doing his duty.”

  “Yeah. Something like that. Listen: a lot’s happened here since I got off. We’re running the slasher bit.”

  “Max Domingo?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. He makes a marvelous slasher.”

  “Yeah. Everything’s right on schedule. Hawk clubbed Batman a pretty good shot, too, so maybe he’s not moving quite as fast as he was. But it’s really funny: he no sooner finished off Hawk than Louise came running around the corner covered with blood. She’s screaming and carrying on about a slasher, so he’s off again. Another squad car’s just pulling up, but they won’t be able to help him. They’ve got their hands full here.”

  “Did you get Louise away?”

  “Yeah. She’s with me. I’m going to switch to the bike, and leave her with the car. I’m heading over to Calvin Street now. Max’ll lead him to Universal Pump over there. Uh-oh—”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “An old couple just came out of Carroll House. They don’t look happy.”

  “Is there a reason we should care, Harry?”

  “Uh—”

  “Are they talking to the police, Harry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they pointing up at the apartment that we used to stage this little performance?” The long silence answered the question. “Are they by any chance the people who live in that apartment?”

  “I don’t know, Boss. They might be.”

  “Why, Harry, are they alive?”

  If Batman thought he was chasing a demented slasher, he could hardly have been more wrong. Max Domingo’s weapon of choice is not the knife. He was an acrobat and a black belt. I’d promised him a bonus if he could take out Batman. I knew it wouldn’t happen, but he might inflict some damage.

  The quickest route from Carroll House to Universal Pump was through back alleys and across decaying corporate lots. We had a cycle waiting for Harry, to ensure that he could get there before the combatants.

  I had chosen the headquarters of Universal Pump because I could see its grounds from my command post. I wanted a good seat for the fight. The building was gray, run-down, one of those ugly converted factories built during the ’20s. About four stories high. A low iron fence enclosed the grounds. Delivery docks lined the building’s north side. The security lights have always been bad, and we’d shot out a few more to enhance the atmosphere. The roof, which sloped just enough to provide drainage, was accessible only by a ladder at the northeast corner. For ordinary people, that is. I listened to the police radio, waited for Harry’s call, and watched. At the west end of the building, a flashlight drifted through the gloom. A guard.

  The purple phone rang and I hit the speaker button. “Go ahead, Harry.”

  “I’m here, Boss. Behind a dumpster out back.”

  “Okay. Wait and watch.”

  I scanned the roof and the approaches with binoculars. Nothing yet.

  “Maybe we should have given Max a phone,” said Harry.

  “No. Not with people who are going to wind up in jail. It wouldn’t take him long to see a pattern. And by the way—”

  “Yeah?”

  “You might be interested in knowing that the old people from Carroll House have talked extensively to the police. Judging from the radio traffic, they’re a little confused now, but even those dummies will eventually figure out that the fight was a setup.”

  “Boss, I’m sorry. Even if we’d killed them, the truth would have come out.”

  “Sure. In a few days, maybe. But not tonight.” As we talked, I used a red marker to make a circle on the wall, and printed Harry’s name inside it. “Well, don’t worry. It doesn’t really matter.”

  “You figure Batman knows?”

  “It would be wise to assume it.” I drew a stroke across the circle. Rim to rim.

  “Boss, Max is on the ladder.”

  “Is he alone?”

  “I can’t see anyone else.” Nor could I. I was able to make out Max: long, scarecrow figure, dark, moving against the deeper black of the old factory.

  I turned out the lights, opened the window, and dragged an armchair over. The air was cold and thick with the smell of brick and decaying wood and weeds. A river of automobile lights—the VanDamm—passed behind Universal Pump, casting flickering shadows across the roof, the docks, the grounds. The traffic was curiously silent, a magic lantern show.

  Max reached the top of the ladder, paused, stepped off onto the roof, and crouched near an exhaust vent. If someone came up t
he ladder, Max would be waiting.

  But no one would come up the ladder. I knew that. And I’d warned Max. Doesn’t anybody listen anymore?

  I sighed and settled back in my chair.

  A bat-shape materialized at the ridgeline, atop the roof. It paused, almost thoughtful. And then glided down toward Max.

  “Nothing yet, Boss,” said Harry.

  Batman might have kicked the damned fool over the edge without Max’s ever knowing he was there. But he stopped, and must have said something, because Max got up and turned slowly around. They faced each other for long moments, caught against the moon. Max assumed the fighter’s stance, while the wind played with Batman’s cape. He looked surreal, ghastly. I knew he was solid, vulnerable. Human. Of all men living, none knows that better than I. Still, I shivered.

  Max did what he could: a few jabs, a couple of kicks. They might have merely passed through the phantom, or it might have been that he floated just outside their reach.

  Suddenly it was over: a dark swirl of movement, and Max was staggering. Batman seized him, took him down, and whatever happened then was blocked off by the cape. When he stood again, Max hung limp over one shoulder. Batman strode to the edge of the roof, paused (and in that moment I had the eerie sensation he was staring directly at me), and started down the ladder.

  “It’s over,” I told Harry.

  “I see them,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought anybody could take Max.”

  “What’s next?”

  “The shootout. It’ll look like drugs.”

  “Get it started. He’s almost down.”

  By 3:00 A.M., Batman must have established an all-time personal best: we gave him a string of seven consecutive muggings along Fourth Avenue, knocked over the Red Spot Liquor Emporium, blew up a church belonging to one of those splinter religious groups that nobody likes, and blasted the door off the vault at the Wheat Exchange. We got away with enough cash to fund the entire operation. But Batman nailed two of the boys.

  About the same time that the comptroller’s unit was at the Wheat Exchange, Manny DeSailles was bailing out Juliana. Twenty minutes later, Batman collared him again trying to stick up a cab.

  The driver was one of my people, and afterward he called me on the white phone. “You wouldn’t believe it, Boss,” he said. “He lifted Shotgun off his feet and I thought for a minute he was going to throttle him on the spot. He was still waiting when the cops came and he told them to see if they could hold onto him this time. They looked kind of scared of him themselves.”

  “Beautiful,” I said, and called DeSailles. “Manny, I got another job for you.”

  We kept Batman going. We robbed all-night markets, broke into private homes, knifed winos, blocked off downtown streets and attacked drivers who couldn’t get through. I even took advantage of the situation to bomb the Penguin’s headquarters down on Eighth.

  Gradually, we led him across town to Carlay Park, to the old John Elk tractor plant abandoned years ago during the war. As fast as the police carted them away, Manny and his associates bailed them out. We threw as many back at him as we could.

  At four-thirty, I called for my car. It rolled up in front of the hotel, and one of my associates opened the door for me. I climbed in. “Hello, Cass,” I said.

  He swiveled around and nodded. “Hello, Joker. Where to?”

  Not a likable man under the best of circumstances. Thin, with narrow eyes that you could never trust, a permanent scowl. Not young, either. Old enough that I could see there was no hope for improvement. “I’m going over to Carlay Park, Cass. But I suspect you have another destination.”

  I watched his hand slide inside his jacket. “What do you mean, Joker?”

  I was fingering my boutonniere, casually, like a man without any serious concerns. “It’s all right, Cass. You’ll enjoy the trip.” I pressed the stud imbedded at the top of the stem. It was too dark in the car to see, but I felt the pressure release, heard the faint hiss, and listened to the sudden strangled cry. “Bought and paid for, Cass. Compliments of management.”

  Thirty minutes later, Harry parked across the street and just down the block from a three-story tenement that the city had promised to renovate a year earlier. In the end, it would be up to me.

  It was mostly vacant, but enough poor families had homesteaded there that it would do. On Harry’s signal, a car raced past Batman (who was wearily putting the wraps on two muggers whom he’d already seen once before that evening), and screeched to a stop in front of the tenement. Three men jumped out and lobbed Molotov cocktails through the windows. Then they roared away while the building burned and the screaming began.

  I had taken a rifle onto a rooftop across the street. From there, I watched him pound across the pavement and, wrapped in his cape, charge into the building. The grace and power I’d seen earlier had dissipated. He was tired now, uncertain, almost clumsy.

  A crowd gathered quickly. One or two tried to follow him in, but were driven back by the heat. People were pouring out of the building. Batman came out with two children and went back in.

  A wall collapsed. People screamed on the upper floors. I watched him bring out several more. A roof collapsed and fire belched out, driving them all back. He turned and looked over at the building where I was waiting.

  Sirens sounded. Far away.

  He bolted across the street and disappeared into the doorway immediately below me. I heard him coming up the stairs.

  It was a bad moment.

  He would come through the trapdoor. The same one I’d used. And which I’d left open. But there was no time to close it.

  And no place to hide.

  I got as far from the light cast by the flames as I could, and stretched out on the roof. I sighted the rifle on the trapdoor.

  In the third-floor windows of the burning building, people were getting ready to jump.

  I thought of Max atop Universal Pump and glanced nervously behind me. When I looked back, he was already out and on the roof. But he wasn’t interested in me, had no idea I was there.

  Our building was a few feet higher than the tenement. He secured a line to the trapdoor, heaved it across the street, and stepped off the rooftop. Then he disappeared into the smoke and flame.

  I went back out to the edge and tried to spot him. He was anchored to the side of the building, taking people out of burning rooms.

  I set the rifle into its black tripod and locked the sight on his back. The weapon was a night-sight, CIA-issue assassin rifle, state-of-the-art.

  A woman clung to his neck while he tried to coax an old man out a window. As I watched, the glass exploded, and the man literally fell out. Batman caught him, but the force of the blast spun them around. But they all held on.

  How easy it would have been then. I zeroed in on the yellow spotlight and the bat symbol, held them, played with the moment. And then, as they dangled, as he began to drop toward the street, the woman swung through the sight.

  She was young, black, perhaps a mother. I shrugged, tried to change my angle so the round wouldn’t go through both of them. When I was satisfied, I squeezed off a round.

  It was enough. She fell into the street. And I saw the agony and the rage in his face. The mask could not conceal it.

  “Boss, somebody else is playing this game.”

  “What do you mean?” Batman was almost to the pavement.

  “A woman he was bringing down. I think somebody shot her. Hard to be sure. There’s a lot of noise here.”

  Yes: sirens and a raging fire. Who can hear a rifle in all that? “Harry, help him.”

  “Help who?”

  “Batman. I want you to help him. Play the public-spirited citizen again. Do what you can.”

  “Boss, the firemen are forming up. I don’t think they’ll let me through.”

  “Do the best you can, Harry. Try to help. We owe it to a suffering humanity.”

  “Okay, Boss. Whatever you say.”

  Batman was on the street now. But it
was still chaotic down there. Harry hurried toward him, holding his arms over his face to shield himself from the blaze. He was the first to reach the woman.

  I broke the phone link with him. “This will just kill Batman, Harry. And you—”

  And you, Harry. I watched him kneeling beside her. I watched Batman hand the old man off to a rescue worker, and then join Harry, who was feeling for her pulse. They were kneeling beside her, very quiet.

  A good moment to die. Not happy, Harry, the way I would have wanted it for you. But fate doesn’t always give us what we want. Life is so arbitrary.

  I sighted on Harry, squeezed the trigger, and sent him to a better existence.

  The first stars were fading in the east. We were running a little late. I waited in a stolen squad car just off Carlay Park, across the street from the John Elk tractor plant. I checked my makeup in the mirror, straightened my tie, and rubbed my sleeve briskly across my badge. A plume of black smoke from the tenement hung across the far side of the park.

  I waited for the blast of a shotgun.

  It came, finally, shattering the early morning tranquility. Juliana had arrived.

  At that hour, there were few abroad other than derelicts. Easy targets. Both barrels fired again. And again. A wino stumbled out of the bushes that lined the street, fell across a bench, rolled to his feet, and kept going.

  Batman, on the edge of the park, but a block away, was dealing with yet another mugger. He turned him loose and disappeared into the shrubbery. I hit the siren.

  Juliana caught the cue: there was no fourth round. Moments later he hurried out of the park, still carrying his weapon. It was a sawed-off. He crossed Carlay Street directly in front of me, climbed the wooden security fence around the tractor plant, and ran inside.

  I started the car and, siren wailing and lights flashing, pursued. In the highest tradition. As Batman entered the scene, I was scrambling out of the front seat, reaching for my .38. “In there,” I said needlessly. “I’ve called for an ambulance and a backup.” He nodded and kept running, took the fence at a leap. He’d managed to keep a utility shack between himself and the factory. I climbed over at the same point. Truth is, I didn’t entirely trust Juliana. Man with a shotgun has no discretion.