If the brakes of a bus can be tampered with, why not the controls of an airplane?
Was Shorty Davis the first of four Aces that were marked for death?
Barbara’s caution was proper, of course. It was a nebulous theory, and hard to prove, especially with the ambiguous terminology involved. But if he was right, there were going to be more deaths and more disasters, until all the Queens, Kings, and Aces in the deck were gone, leaving only the Joker to celebrate his victory over—what? The purposeless, senseless madness of it all was appalling, but that didn’t lessen the danger or the urgency.
Gordon, despite the apron around his waist, his hands submerged in sudsy water, still looked like a heroic statue a sculptor might have entitled RESOLVE.
Let them laugh at him. Let them think he was as unbalanced as the Joker himself. He was going to put his reputation on the line.
The next morning, in the D.A.’s conference room, Gordon took a deep breath and plunged in.
Everybody listened respectfully to his “Deadly Deck” theory. Only one person smothered a chuckle. Mark Something-or-Other, obviously trying to make points with Barbara’s old man, said he found the Commissioner’s theory “interesting.” But there was no doubt that the skeptical level around the table was very high.
“It’s true that the Joker’s committed some bizarre crimes in the past,” Riggs said. “But let’s face it, Commissioner. His pranks always had a punchline. He may have chosen peculiar means to get what he wanted, but he always wanted something.”
“That’s the truth,” Milt Jaffe said. “And what does he get out of knocking off this imaginary deck of cards?”
“I can’t answer that question,” Gordon said miserably. “I wish I could. Maybe it has something to do with Monarch—”
“With who?” Mark asked.
“That was before your time,” Jaffe grumbled. “Monarch was a playing card company that the Joker robbed. Only he didn’t call himself ‘the Joker’ then.”
“He made his escape from the Monarch factory by swimming through a pool of chemical waste. It turned his hair green and his skin that dead-white color—that’s why he looks the way he does. And that’s why he decided to become the Clown Prince of Crime.”
Mark looked doubtful. “Are you saying this is some kind of revenge against the company?”
“No way,” Milt Jaffe said, the dead cigar dancing in his mouth. “Monarch’s been out of business for years . . . Anyway, even if this theory of yours is true, Commissioner, what the hell could we do about it? How would we know the ‘card’ he’ll be after next?”
“We don’t know,” Gordon said miserably. “But at least we can be alert. He may be after another ‘Queen’ or ready to start on the ‘Kings.’ We’re not expecting any, are we?”
“As a matter of fact,” the D. A. said casually, “we are.”
“What?”
“Ever hear of King Harold of Lumidia?”
“I never heard of Lumidia,” Jaffe said.
“It’s one of those emerging nations,” Riggs said. “It’s only been in existence a year, and its history is pretty bloody. This guy Harold took over the throne in some kind of palace revolution, and now he runs the country with an iron sceptre. He must have got jealous when he heard that Queen Elizabeth decided to visit Gotham City, so he decided to do the same.”
“He’ll have to change his mind,” Gordon said firmly. “This is no time for a King to visit this town!”
“How do you propose to stop him?”
“I don’t know! I’ll call the State Department,” Gordon said. “I’ll try to convince them that there are . . . unstable elements at the moment, that it would be better to postpone the trip.”
“Of course, you’ll have to convince them of the merits of your ‘deck’ theory,” Biggs said.
“Yes,” Gordon said unhappily. “I suppose I will.”
“Lots of luck,” Milt Jaffe said drily. But he looked at the Commissioner with something close to compassion.
Gordon felt ten years older when he returned home that night and turned on the local television news.
He was saddened to realize that he was actually hoping for a card-related crime, for a Queen to be violated, a King to fall, an Ace to be trumped. But there was nothing.
He was just about to turn off the Johnny Carson Show—another funnyman with a “J”—when the screen went dark and a special bulletin was announced. Gordon listened in disbelief, and knew there was no way he could sleep until he read the whole story in the early edition.
LES KOVACS, PITCHING ACE, DIES IN
FALL FROM HOTEL WINDOW
The story was a lengthy one, but most of the columns were filled with biographical facts about Kovacs’s colorful career in baseball. There was a knowing reference to his reputation for hard drinking, clearly implying that alcohol was responsible for his plunge from that twelfth-floor window.
The details were sparse. All the police could uncover was that Kovacs had encountered a stranger at the dimly lit hotel bar, and they had left together. The only description they had concerned his height—he was unusually tall. The reason for their departure was easy to determine, judging from the empty whiskey bottles and the playing cards scattered across the room. There was a winning poker hand left intact on a table. Three aces, a King, and a Joker.
The Joker must have been wild, Commissioner Gordon thought grimly. Very, very wild . . .
The following day was one of the most demeaning of his long career. His call to the State Department had resulted in a literal invasion of his office and his privacy. There were three grim-faced Secret Service operatives waiting for him, and with exaggerated courtesy they hustled him off to some safe house in Gotham where another trio of government agents grilled him for hours about his knowledge of Lumidia, King Harold, Asian and African politics, international terrorism, and the Joker.
He was sweating like a grilled criminal by the time they were through. When he was given a chance to explain his motives for wanting King Harold’s trip postponed, it sounded feeble to his own ears. If anything, they were even more polite than before. They promised to relay his “interesting conjecture” to the proper authorities, and drove him home.
What happened in the next five days was perhaps the cruelest occurrence of them all.
Nothing happened.
There were crimes, of course. There were accidents, natural and unnatural. There were half a dozen violent deaths, none worthy of sixty-point headlines. A wife bludgeoned her husband with his own bowling ball. A bartender shot and killed a robber. A six-year-old found his father’s gun and crippled a neighbor. And there was a double suicide, of Joel and Jerry Kronk, fifty-six and fifty-eight respectively, sole survivors of a 50’s singing group.
Gordon didn’t know whether to feel chagrin or relief.
On the sixth day, his heart sank, for three reasons:
HOTEL “QUEEN” DIES IN ROBBERY ATTEMPT
Hermione Langston, Owner of Posh
Atlantis-Regency, Killed by Jewel Thief
BERNIE BAKER DIES IN AUTO CRASH
Was Famed as Gotham’s “Donut King”
ANOTHER ROYAL VISITOR FOR GOTHAM
Lumidia’s Sovereign to Visit City
When he arrived home that evening, he found his daughter sitting quietly in the living room, listening to an old LP record, in a pensive mood that troubled him.
“I know,” he said glumly. “You’ve seen the headlines. About the hotel ‘Queen’ and the donut ‘King’ and you think I’m going to start making a fuss about my ‘Joker’ theory again. Make a fool of myself like I did the last time.”
“No, Daddy,” she said quietly. “You see—I believe you!”
“You what?”
She looked at him with eyes that were narrowed by pain.
“I was so stupid not to trust you, not to understand. You’ve been right all along, and nobody was smart enough to recognize it. It’s the Joker, Daddy, it is! He’s playing this horrible game of
death and laughing up his sleeve at all of us!”
“But—what made you change your mind?”
“This,” she said, indicating the record jacket on the floor. She picked it up and looked at the liner notes. “I thought I’d heard those names before. It was on a quiz show, Jeopardy, I think. The Kronk Brothers. There used to be four Kronk brothers, and you can understand why they used a different name for their singing group.” She turned the album around, and gave her father a look at the title.
The Four Aces Sing Again.
Gordon came as close to tears as he had been since the death of his wife. He slumped onto the sofa and Barbara put her arms around him as if he were the child between them.
“I was so shaken up when I realized the truth,” she said. “I’ve had such a hard time with Mark about this ‘Deadly Deck’ theory of yours. He just won’t believe it; he keeps finding all sorts of reasons not to believe it, all having to do with ‘statistics.’ We almost broke up twice because of it.”
He patted his daughter’s hand. “You don’t have to make any sacrifices, baby. I’m big enough to defend myself.”
“Well, it wasn’t just because of you,” she said wistfully. “There was something else. His absolute refusal to admit that he might be in danger, too, because of his name . . .”
“His name?” Gordon said, surprised. “You mean Mark’s name?”
“Yes!” Barbara smiled weakly. “I know you keep calling him Mark Something-or-Other, but he does have a name. It’s Marcus King, Jr.”
“King!”
“There are dozens of people named ‘King’ in Gotham City, of course, and there’s no reason why he should be in particular danger from the Joker, not that he agrees that there is any—”
“So he’s the son of Marcus King? The Department Store man?”
“That’s right. And tonight, when I remembered about this old album and realized that the Joker has managed to wipe out four Jacks, and four Aces, and three Queens . . .”
“You haven’t seen the news today, have you? It’s four Queens. That self-styled hotel queen, you remember her. She was killed in what was called a ‘jewel robbery.’ And unless it’s sheer coincidence, that monstrous maniac has already killed his first King.”
Barbara gasped. “Who?”
“He’s not genuine royalty. Only a poor man named Bernie Baker—they called him the Donut King. But genuine royalty is on its way to Gotham this minute. Maybe right into the jaws of death. The grinning jaws of the Joker!”
“Oh, Daddy—you don’t mean that King from Lumidia? The one you tried to warn off?”
“My warning wasn’t heeded,” the Commissioner said bitterly. “And now the Joker’s joke may become an international incident . . .” He stood up suddenly, his wrath seeming to add inches to his height. “Only I won’t let it happen! I’ll set a trap for the Joker if I have to commandeer every man on the Force! If I have to call out the Army, the Navy, and the Marines! He isn’t going to get away with it!”
“But what if they still don’t believe you? If they won’t give you the manpower you need?”
“I’ll make them believe me, or they can have my job!”
“Daddy, please don’t do anything you’ll regret. I mean—there is an alternative—there is something else you can do—”
He stared at her.
“You mean Batman, don’t you?”
“Has anyone else ever been able to stop the Joker?”
“You don’t think I’m . . . competent enough, to handle the situation without him.”
“I didn’t say that, Daddy.”
“It’s what you think. What most of the world thinks, I suppose. Only this time, I’m ready for him. I’ve figured out his game plan! I’m sure. I can stop the Joker before he takes another life.”
The telephone was ringing. Barbara picked it up, and at first her face brightened as she heard the familiar voice on the other end. But then every muscle in her body seemed to liquefy. She sank into a chair, limp as a Raggedy Ann doll, and her alarmed father rushed to her side.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s happened?”
She stared at the telephone, unable to reply. Gordon snatched it out of her hand and bellowed into the mouthpiece.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Mark, Commissioner. I didn’t mean to do that to Barbara . . . but I just had to tell her . . . why I won’t be seeing her this evening . . . This horrible thing that happened . . .”
“What happened? What is it?”
“My parents . . . both of them . . . They were driving upstate . . . A car ran them off the road . . . They were killed instantly . . .”
“Good God,” the Commissioner said. He wanted to say something properly sympathetic, but his mind raced forward to a question that had to be asked.
“The other driver . . .”
“He never stopped. He got away without a trace. But . . . my father lived long enough to say something about him.” The voice choked for a moment, but Gordon demanded to hear the rest.
“He said something about a horrible face at the wheel . . . A horrible, white, smiling face . . .”
The Commissioner hung up slowly.
He didn’t look at Barbara again. He simply removed his billfold and found a folded slip of paper. Then he picked up the phone once more and dialed an unfamiliar area code.
There was both good news and bad news for the Gotham City Police on the morning that Pan-Oceanic’s Flight 101 touched down at Gotham City Airport.
The good news was that the crowd was small. Few of Gotham’s citizens were aware of Lumidia, to say nothing of its newly crowned King Harold, and the Gotham press had done little to enlighten them. There were no banner headlines about the royal visit, no live television crews to record the event, although there was one ENG truck representing the local station. At best, the event would result in a brief story at the bottom of page one, and a two-minute segment on the local news with film of His Majesty, uniformed and bemedaled, waving and grinning from the top of the ramp. There would be a few lighthearted words about his mission; aside from the usual loan request, Lumidia was anxious to learn about American palm-oil processing. There were a lot of palm trees in Lumidia.
The bad news was that Gotham City’s protection was drastically reduced that morning. Despite the small turnout, Commissioner Gordon’s anxiety had resulted in the assignment of almost one third of Gotham’s police force to ensure King Harold’s safety. Cops outnumbered spectators, and when His Majesty descended from the ramp of the jetliner, he saw almost nothing but a sea of blue. Actually, King Harold was flattered. Never having seen an American police uniform, he assumed this was a military escort, and saluted Gotham City’s Finest like the general he had once been.
Among the waiting dignitaries, Commissioner Gordon was the most apprehensive. There were three distinct possibilities that morning, all of them unnerving. If everything went smoothly, and there was no attempt on King Harold’s life, Gordon’s elaborate precautions would make him a laughingstock. If there was an attempt, and it succeeded, it would make the entire police establishment of Gotham City look foolish and inept. Either way, his career would be over.
It was only the third possibility that would save the day. If the Joker played out his hand, if he tried to eliminate the last card in his Deck of Death—and failed. But could that Jeering Jester be stopped? Was even all this massed power enough to foil the brilliant madman who had already taken so many lives in his senseless game of 52 Pickup?
Gordon hadn’t heard one word from Batman since his call to the U.S. Satellite Station. He had followed instructions and simply left his name with the operator, but there had been no response, no way of knowing if his message ever reached the Caped Crusader. Even if it had, there had been no opportunity to describe the problem, to tell Batman about the danger he anticipated at Gotham City Airport. Despite the battalions of police officers, Gordon felt very much alone.
He clenched his fists as he saw the
Mayor turn to ask an aide if he had the Key to the City. It was a symbolic silver-plated key of exaggerated size, offered to every important visitor. The aide seemed flustered by the question.
“I thought you wanted it left in the terminal,” he said. “Higgins said you called and told him to leave it at the POA message desk.”
“I didn’t phone Higgins or anybody else this morning!” Hizzoner said indignantly. “Now go get the damned thing right now!”
The aide went trotting off toward the terminal building, and Gordon felt a sudden twinge of alarm.
“Mr. Mayor!” he said.
But the Mayor, deliberately or otherwise, didn’t hear him. He started to walk toward the red carpet being rolled out on the tarmac. Gordon hesitated, not sure if he should run after him, to query this odd detail about a telephone call he had never made. Gordon was hypersensitive to odd details these days. But it was too late. The Mayor, eager to be the first to greet the royal visitor, was already at the ramp, extending his hand toward King Harold and beaming so widely that the sun glittered off his gold front tooth.
Some instinct made Gordon turn and look back toward the terminal. He saw the Mayor’s aide—he suddenly remembered that his name was Philpott—talking to an unusually tall, thin man in an airline uniform whose face was in shadow. The man handed Philpott the key and strode off unhurriedly in the other direction.
The Mayor was already making his welcoming speech into the microphone, in his usual jocular style. Nobody knew if King Harold got the point of his humor, but he kept on smiling just the same. The smile was even more dazzling as Hizzoner took the silver key from Philpott’s hand and presented it to His Majesty with a nondeferential bow.
To Commissioner Gordon, the world seemed to be moving in slow motion. He watched the presentation of the key—and out of the corner of his eye, the tall airline employee strolling casually toward a small helicopter—and he knew exactly what was going to happen next. Like the trailer of a movie, he saw the bursting globe of orange flame, the showering debris of metal and flesh and bone, as the nitroglycerin-filled cylinder detonated with a deafening boom and, for King Harold, Hizzoner, and God knows how many others, the Key to the City became the Key to the Kingdom of God.
The Further Adventures of The Joker Page 42