The Further Adventures of The Joker

by Martin H. Greenberg

  His eyes lit up. “Of course! The middle of NOWHERE is H!”

  He strode toward the football-tossing booth and heard Amicia’s hasty heels behind him on the boardwalk.

  The pitchman held out a pair of little footballs. “The dashing gentleman and the fair lady wish to try their skill? Ten throws for a dollar.”

  Batman snorted. “Skill!” He said over his shoulder to Amicia, “It’s supposed to be a test of skill, but it’s really a grift. The sucker has no chance to win the tawdry merchandise offered as prizes.” He leaned over and reached below the counter. “See, the gaff is a hidden lever that narrows the goalposts so the football can’t pass through.” He worked the lever several times, then straightened and turned to confront the pitchman and modestly accept Amicia’s plaudits and then get on with the business of meeting the Joker.

  But they were gone. He just caught sight of the man hurrying Amicia into the Tunnel of Love.

  The calliope stepped up its steam-whistle melody as if to keep pace with Batman’s heart. By the time he reached the Tunnel of Love, the train of swan cars was already vanishing into the tunnel. Batman just made the last car.

  Before the train took a curve, he made out the only others aboard—a silhouetted couple in the lead car. He recognized Amicia’s profile, and now had recognized the man’s.

  The Joker!

  As he caught sight of them again on the straightaways, they seemed a pair of lovebirds, and he felt something like jealousy. But quickly he told himself their closeness was one enforced by the Joker.

  Batman made his way over the swaying jouncing cars toward the front of the train.

  Just as he set himself to pounce on the Joker, the lights went out and the train slowed.

  When they came on again, the Joker was gone and the train picked up speed.

  Batman climbed in beside Amicia.

  “Are you all right?”

  Her eyes shone, and when she spoke he was glad to see it was with excitement rather than fear. “Yes! Where did he go to?”

  Before Batman could answer, the train gave a lurch and they were in darkness again.

  “I think the Joker’s switched us onto another track,” he said when he got his breath back.

  “Then that was really the Joker?”

  “Yes. I should’ve known better back at the football pitch. That’s where we were supposed to schmooze. But he saw you with me and was quick to take advantage. Now I have you to look out for.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

  Another lurch ended the argument. The train swerved into a lighted patch.

  He saw a row of wooden duck cutouts off to one side of the track and it hit him that the swan train was heading through the shooting gallery. He and Amicia were to be targets.

  Just in time he winged out his bulletproof cape, shielding the two of them from the Joker’s deadly markmanship. They rode through the fire, Amicia none the worse for the ordeal, Batman sustaining bruises from bullet impact.

  But the ordeal was not over. The train picked up speed again, making it too dangerous to jump off even if the narrow tunnel had permitted. They had perforce to ride on.

  Again, a lurch. They had not long to wonder what track the Joker had switched them onto. The train broke out into the open and they found themselves heading upward.

  They were on the Loop the Loop.

  Batman was all too aware that they were not belted in or harnessed. But centrifugal force should carry them safely through the overhead curve. Unless the Joker slowed or stalled the train at the top. Batman prepared himself for that eventuality.

  He drew the hook-end of his coiled steel line from his belt and held it ready, giving himself lots of slack. He was aware of Amicia watching him and he spoke honestly to her. “I think the Joker means to pull another one on us. Put your arms around my neck.”

  “This isn’t the Tunnel of Love,” Amicia said. She gave a forced laugh. “Sorry, I’m just trying for lightness. I’ll hang on.”

  She locked her arms around his neck. He sensed she was trying to keep it from being a choke hold.

  He craned to see ahead and spotted the block the Joker had put across the rails at the very top. Just before the car hit the block, Batman swung the hook at a crosstie. He had only one shot at it, so it had to be good.

  It seemed to catch and he had no choice but to act on the belief that it had caught. He thrust himself and Amicia out and away from the swan car. By the time they swung back the car had plummeted past them. He lowered them more slowly to the ground.

  While he unhooked himself from the line, Amicia loosened her clutch to stand on her wobbly own. As much to keep her from dwelling on the death they had escaped and get her out of more harm’s way as to summon help, he asked her to find a phone and bring Commissioner Gordon up to date. Gordon would know what to do.

  Alone, he went to track the Joker to his lair.

  By now, the boardwalk was for the most part dark. Everyone, even the gulls and pigeons, had gone. But one attraction remained lit: the funhouse with its sideshow.

  “Step right up, friend,” the barker said. He tore a ticket off a coil. “This one’s on the funhouse.”

  The Joker.

  Batman recognized him even though he had disguised himself once more.

  “Joker, you’ll have to answer for what you did.”

  “What I did is a question?”

  Batman longed to wipe the smirk off the Joker’s face. But before Batman could move to capture him, before the Annie Oakley wafted to the ground, the Joker had backflipped from his stand and vanished inside.

  Batman followed swiftly, looking out for traps.

  He strode past the human oddities on display, glancing at them only just enough to make sure none was the Joker in disguise. He knew the fat man and the Siamese twins had put themselves on show, still he did not like to stare.

  He had to stare at the bat with a human head that confronted him—then saw it was himself made squat in a mirror. He had come to an array of fun mirrors that formed a dead end.

  Yet the Joker had passed this way. At least one of the mirrors had to be a door.

  “Batman!”

  Amicia’s voice, outside. He turned from the mirrors and dashed past the sideshow to the entrance.

  “What is it?”

  “Oh, there you are. The commissioner has already sealed off the boardwalk. But he says he can’t move his SWAT teams in as long as the Joker holds Clay and the two women as trump cards.”

  “I understand, It’s just as well. This is between Batman and the Joker, and I don’t want innocent blood shed. But it goes against my grain to let him get away with the ransom, the cocaine, and the jewels. If only I could locate and free the hostages . . .”

  He turned to look within. This time he let his gaze linger on the human oddities. Even if they did not find him something out of the ordinary, it seemed very strange that they had not reacted at all to what had been happening under their eyes.

  They stood hardly moving, eyes open but unfocused. Now that he took a good look at them he saw they were drugged.

  He saw more. The fat man was not a simple fat man. His banner said BALLOON MAN. And the Siamese twins were lovely enough to be models.

  Batman sprang onto the platform. Close up, the features islanded in the moon face were Roman A. Clay’s. The Joker had dosed him with steroids and pumped him full of silicone. The models, if Batman had to guess, were joined by Crazy Glue.

  He called down to Amicia. “Get back to Gordon. Tell him to send ambulances. We have the hostages. I’ll stand guard here till help arrives.”

  She stared a moment while it dawned on her, then turned and ran.

  After medics had taken Clay and the models away, Gordon was ready to move his people in.

  But Batman stopped him. “Please keep everyone away. This is between Batman and the Joker.”

  Gordon hesitated, then nodded. “As you wish. You’ve earned the right.” He took
Amicia’s arm and gently led her out of the funhouse.

  Batman waited a moment, then drew a deep breath and moved to the mirrors.

  The first he tested gave to his touch. It pivoted, and he slid through a space.

  And found the Joker’s loot.

  Boxes of packaged cocaine labeled Cotton Candy and crates of jewels labeled Ice Cream.

  But no Joker.

  Batman searched the place, though there seemed no space for the Joker to be hiding in.

  Somehow, the Joker had found a way out.

  On one wall hung a gaudy painting signed Joker. In spite of himself, Batman had to admire the Joker’s artistry. Batman looked more closely at the abstract painting. It wasn’t a canvas. The Joker had framed his paint-spattered smock. Batman had to smile.

  All business again, Batman swung the frame away from the wall. An opening, the Joker’s way out. With a grimace, Batman let the frame swing back into place.

  He tensed, sensing movement behind him.

  A mirror was pivoting and a figure was trying to slip out. Incredibly, the Joker had been hiding in here all along. For some reason, now that he had all but made his getaway, he had got stuck in the doorway.

  Batman said, “Not so fast.”

  The figure remained helplessly reflected in the mirror.

  The Joker, all right.

  But when Batman moved in to collar him, he was not the Joker. He was a dwarf made up as the Joker and elongated by the fun mirror.

  “I’m not the Joker, I’m not the Joker,” he screeched. “I’m Metrognome. The Joker got away. I only wanted a few jewels.”

  And it was the jewels, more than a few, that had trapped him in the doorway, for his pockets bulged with them.

  The Joker had escaped.

  Maybe next time.

  Jangletown

  Elizabeth Hand and Paul Witcover

  The package had reached him through the usual channels. It contained a small diary, the pages filled with a cramped, unruly script. There was no name to identify an owner, and the first pages had been torn out, so that the text began in midentry, dateless—flipping ahead a few pages he saw that none of the entries were dated.

  The note accompanying the diary, written in green ink, was not signed or dated either. It did not need to be. He’d been expecting a communication of some sort for days now. With a sigh, he settled more comfortably into the black leather chair, had another swallow of the hot and bitter coffee, and, as directed by the note, began to read from the beginning.

  . . . but sit, man, waiting for the J to hit. Outside the big bad city, Love Me Avenue. Gotta be in the right frame of mind for that scene, no lie. Need the Doctor for that. So backpack between my legs I leaned back against one greasy, pissed-on wall checking it all out: homeboys roaming in tight packs, junkies on the nod, jittery crackheads, stumblebums seeking handouts, busloads of paleface tourists like flocks of sheep ready for shearing. And cops just itching to open fire, got that look of hate and terror in their eyes to remind me of home and Dear Old Dead Old Dad. Headphones blasting Rictus, “Serene Disdain”—oh, yeah, it was starting to come together, my own private MTV! Dude slinked over mouthing, “Sense? Sense?” And I had to laugh, ’cause like all of a sudden it’s jangle time, I mean the Doctor is IN, and that’s all the sense I need.

  Dude gave me a wink as I slipped by. “Man, you lookin’?”

  “I’m cookin’,” I said with a giggle, a little too loud. Couple of cops started over in slow motion, but by then I was out of there, on the street, safe.

  Even cooking with J took some long seconds to plug in. Saturday night on Love Me Avenue, Jangletown, U.S.A. The poxy brain of Gotham in its perpetual grand mal seizure, neurons blazing like Chinatown fireworks to the tune of Live Girls and the strobing blues and reds of police cars and ambulances, sirens wailing, people wailing louder, stench of hot dogs and stale sweat and automobile exhaust trapped and festering at the bottom of these dead canyons sunk beneath a smog so foul and thick it’s like living underwater. No, they will not find me here.

  Day and night the smoke goes up from this island pyre to sting the eyes of angels. Do they weep? I sometimes wonder. Once, sick and feverish, I dreamed of angels gazing down, lovely faces lost in light, wings spread wide as clouds. Oh how I longed to join them, but then the fever broke. I never saw them again until the Doctor took me by the hand and showed me how to look. Now it’s angels everywhere, man. But they’re above this city like nowhere else. Here I’ll find the one I seek, the prince of angels I glimpsed so long ago in a fever dream. I saw him again in Dear Old Dead Old’s eyes, and it made me smile like the promise of a punchline as I pulled the trigger, jingle, jangle, jongle.

  Rictus could not keep up with the Doctor. As I changed tapes, a voice at my shoulder grated, “Man, you got a crash?”

  The dude from the Port Authority, Blue jogging suit: leather medallion of Mother Africa in purple, green, red. and white. I frowned, stepped away, ready to merge with and into the chaos of the street, janglewise.

  “Hell, no one want to mess with you, boy. Yeah, you cookin all right. But you be hurtin’ soon, I see that. You call this number Ask for Panic; that’s me.”

  A slip of paper in my hand, and the dude was gone. Panic—like where do they get these names? Cranked some Ozone and let the flow sweep me where it would.

  Panic: he knew that name. Part-time dealer in flesh, full-time in drugs. His kind were common as cockroaches and more difficult to exterminate.

  Jangle: he knew that name, too. AKA Doctor and/or J. Streets had been flooded with the drug over the last few months; it had appeared out of nowhere in tiny patches no bigger than a thumbprint, patches emblazoned with crazy patterns, drunken mandalas of violet and green and crimson that just so happened to blend in perfectly with the current rage for face tattoos.

  Gotham seemed to be a test area; other cities had not yet reported substantial quantities of the drug. It was a personal challenge, of course, these punks poisoning his city, out to make their reps over his dead body like gunfighters in the Old West. Sometimes he could hear their laughter echoing even in this dark and peaceful refuge.

  But jangle was no joke. A cocaine derivative, like crack, cut with the usual strychnine but also spliced with a designer drug he hadn’t been able to isolate, a subtle psychedelic that induced hallucinations of a paranoid nature as the dosage increased . . . which it always did. Withdrawal saw to that. Euphoria, fantasies of power and control, mystical delusions capable of reaching an intensity that in extreme cases (and they were all extreme cases, sooner or later) erupted into full-blown psychosis. And to judge by what he’d read so far, the author of this anonymous diary was reaching the breaking point.

  . . . but then it only took a second. Me, dazed and hungry by the dawn’s early gloom, the Doctor O-U-T and a dirty drizzle falling from a dirty sky as I searched for a cozy corner where I could slap on some J in peace and quiet, just enough to bring me down light as a feather. Had the news buzzing in my ears, President declares war on drugs ha-ha, no reports of suburban murders but then Mom worked nights and wouldn’t be home for another hour or so.

  Next thing I knew I was on my butt watching a couple kids dive down the subway with my backpack, my headphones bouncing along behind. I was too wasted to do anything but lay there while the street Samaritans howled helpfully. Fortunately there were no cops around, so I got to my feet and split though the cramps had started and I knew I wouldn’t get far.

  I made it around the corner and halfway down the next block before my guts came boiling up in my throat. I barely had time to drop to my knees in the gutter. I wondered if I was dying and more than half hoped so. I’d always come down nice and slow before, easy does it, softened the crash with a nice fluffy pillow. What an idiot to keep all my stash in one place! I deserved to suffer, man.

  And I did, lying there I don’t know how long, an hour maybe, knowing if I didn’t move it was just a matter of time before the cops found me on their next sweep of the
Avenue.

  Then came the miracle. Through my misery I felt a flutter of fingers deftly peeling the useless dose from my neck and replacing it with a fresh one. And oh, man, this was some pure stuff, I mean jangle with a capital J. In seconds I felt the cool and fiery rush enter my blood, saw behind my blinded eyes the intricate dance of light and shadow that forms the substance of this world and glimpsed once more in the dirty clouds, infinite hierarchies of angels, angels orchestrating our destinies with delicate strokes of their glittering wings, each bright feather keen as a razor blade.

  “Don’t freak,” admonished the childish voice of my savior. “We gotta split. Come on.” And pulled me to my feet. “You okay?”

  With an effort I blinked away the angels, saw a face scarcely less beautiful: high cheekbones, smooth skin so pale it seemed a hard look might leave a bruise, eyes wide and piercing blue, short hair colored and shaved in swirls as though tie-dyed except for a sheaf of white-blond bangs flopping over one eye. A tattooed Mandelbrot Set flared across his neck like the badge of some exotic clan, concealing from all but practiced eyes a jolt of J. Torn T-shirt, dirty jeans, purple All-Stars with bright green laces. I guessed he was no more than thirteen; two years my junior in all but the ability to survive on Love Me Avenue “Way rad tattoo,” I said.

  “Name’s Toddy,” he answered. We fell into step with that weird synchronicity of thought and action that springs up between two users, as though the drug made us brothers.

  “Mine’s Galen,” I replied. I had a feeling we were going to hit it off, I was warping out on the J. Without Toddy there I would’ve freaked for sure. “Galen Starling.”

  He giggled as we dodged through the crowded street, straights giving us glances of disgust and annoyance as they hurried to their nine-to-fives.

  “Panic’s gonna love that,” he promised, an hysterical edge to his voice. While Toddy was calming me, I had the opposite effect on him. He absorbed my high like a jangle vampire.

  Panic. That name sounded familiar, but it wasn’t until Toddy had led me down a dizzying maze of streets and alleys to a building of bricked-and boarded-up doors and windows in a neighborhood that looked as if a war had swept through only yesterday that I remembered the slip of paper still in my pocket.