by Jason Starr
“You’re really gonna have to get out of my way now, Ryan,” Harvey said, “but I’ll give you a piece of free advice. Consider yourself lucky.”
“Lucky?” Maxwell said. “Lucky how?”
“Let’s put it this way,” Harvey said. “You’re not gonna be the next mega lottery winner, but most guys who whack their wives never see the light of day again. But like a cat, somehow you wound up landing on your feet. So don’t piss this opportunity away. Kick the booze, get a job, stay on your feet, find Jesus—anything that works. If you take another fall, you won’t get back up.”
“But it’s not safe for me to be out,” Maxwell said. “I was safe inside—everybody was safe. I told them that, but they didn’t listen. They sent me to a counselor. The guy wanted me to find a job, become a normal citizen. He told me, ‘People can change,’ but the truth is that people never change. If you’re evil, you stay evil forever. I don’t know what it’s like to be good, but I guess it’s the same way.”
“To each his own,” Harvey said.
Finally Maxwell stood aside and let him pass.
“I don’t need you to take me,” the man said, his tone angry, defiant. “I’ll wind up back in Arkham somehow. You’ll see!”
Shrugging it off, Harvey entered the building. The vestibule smelled like piss, but after breathing in Ryan’s stench, it was like a breath of fresh spring air. People were hanging out in the hallway, the kind of crowd you’d expect to find at a cheap S.R.O. on this side of town—pimps, hookers, drug dealers, drug addicts, and ex-cons.
“Lookin’ for a date?” a hooker asked Harvey.
She wasn’t bad looking—long straight blonde hair in a kinda sexy black leather getup, like something Fish Mooney might wear. At a hornier time and place, Harvey may have taken her up on her offer.
“You know where Roberto is?” he asked.
A moment of hesitation, then she shook her head. Harvey knew what that meant. He held out a twenty.
“Do you know where Roberto is?”
She grabbed the money faster than a seagull snatching a dead fish on the beach.
“Fourth floor, room at the end of the hallway.”
Harvey headed up, passing more deadbeats and hookers. It was like a convention. A wide range of music blasted from the rooms—salsa, reggae, hip-hop, metal. Even so, a lot of voices could be heard over the music. People arguing about the usual topics—sex, drugs, and money.
By the fourth floor, Harvey had his gun out. He banged on the door twice.
“Come in.”
Harvey opened the door. A scruffy guy about Harvey’s age was sitting in a chair facing him. Somehow Harvey felt like an expected visitor, rather than a surprise guest.
“Harvey Bullock, Detective GCPD.” He flashed his badge.
“A detective?” The guy acted surprised. “What can I do for you?”
“You Roberto Colon?”
“Either that was a great first guess, or you’re a psychic. Either one would be extremely impressive. Though I’ve met psychics, and you don’t have the right soul for it. I can tell that and we just met, what, twenty seconds ago?”
“A talker, huh?” Harvey said. “Great, just what I needed today. Why did you take off from Angel’s?”
“Angel’s? What’s Angel’s?”
“You wanna be a wise guy, huh? I’ll run you in, and we can talk all you want downtown.”
“You’re making a big assumption there, Detective.”
“Yeah?” Harvey said. “How’s that?”
“Well, to take me in you’ll have to be alive.”
Two guys Harvey hadn’t seen, hiding on either side of the door, grabbed him—each one taking an arm. Both of them were big. Then one of the gorillas kicked the door shut. Colon pulled out a gun and aimed it at Harvey.
“This is what I believe is called a turn of events,” Colon said. “Drop it, Detective, or I’ll kill you right now.”
Harvey dropped his gun.
“Well, talk about role reversal,” Colon said. “Maybe I should call you Roberto, and you should call me Detective. Or do you prefer Harvey?” He laughed. One of the guys holding Harvey laughed, too. Well, more like gurgled.
“If you’re looking for a career in stand-up,” Harvey said, “you better work on your material.”
Colon got up and approached. “Aw, he doesn’t think I’m funny,” he said in a mocking voice. “I’m so hurt.” Leaning in closer, he added, “You know when you’re a guest, you should always laugh at your host’s jokes.”
Using his free hand Colon lashed out with a blow to the gut. It was a good shot, took Harvey’s breath away, and he keeled over as much as he could with the two goons holding him up. The bust had officially gone from bad to worse.
“Now we’re clear about the new power dynamics,” Colon said, “how about you tell me why you’re looking for me?”
“S-son of a bitch,” Harvey managed to say.
“True, my mother was quite a bitch,” Colon said. “She neglected me, beat me, and pretty much tortured me on a daily basis. So I’m one of the rare guys who don’t mind it when you insult my mother. But getting back to the matter at hand—” He lifted Harvey’s face with one hand. “—the purpose of your visit.”
“A friend of yours was killed at Wayne Manor last night,” Harvey said. “A painting was stolen. A Picasso.”
“Well, well, I’m impressed with your sleuthing, Detective. It’s been, what, twelve hours since the robbery, and you’ve practically solved the case. Emphasis on practically. Which is good news for me, bad news for you.”
“So you admit you broke into Wayne Manor?”
“There you go, asking questions again. I thought we discussed that.” He unloaded another fist into Harvey’s gut, leaving Harvey gasping like he had a bad case of asthma.
“Well, as much fun as this has been,” Colon said, “I have business to attend to, so I’m going to have to cut our visit short.” He aimed the gun at Harvey’s face.
Was this really how he was going to check out? Killed by some loudmouth punk? Harvey glanced at his gun on the floor, a couple feet away, but he couldn’t reach for it with the goons holding his arms.
“W-w-wait,” he said. “How will you get rid of my body? Too many people know where to find you. People saw me come up, too. You’ve been sloppy.” He was stalling for time, trying to figure a way out.
“You think anybody cares what goes on in this place?” Colon asked, but he lowered the gun. “There are shootings here every day. As for your body, that’s where a chainsaw and some trash bags come in handy. This time tomorrow, you’ll be sinking to the bottom of the Gotham River with God knows whoever else is down there. Then you’ll be fish food. Are there still fish in the Gotham River? You don’t have to answer that. Sayonara, Detective Bullock.”
He aimed the gun again.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Hello, I have money.”
A girl. It sounded like one of the pros.
Another knock.
“Hello, I have money for you,” she said. “Open up.”
“Who the hell is that?” Colon demanded of his thugs.
They just shrugged.
“Get rid of her,” Colon said.
One guy went to the door, while the other one held Harvey. He tried to edge toward his gun, but the gorilla had an iron grip.
The thug who’d let go opened the door. “The hell do you—?”
Wham! The door slammed into his face, so hard that it knocked him off-balance, and he stumbled backward, bellowing in pain. Judging from the blood, something was broken, maybe his nose.
Then Amanda stepped into the room, her gun up so that it was aimed at Colon. She stood with her legs apart and her knees flexed.
“Drop it!” she said.
The thug holding Harvey went for his own piece, which gave Harvey enough slack to break free. The goon swung his pistol up toward Amanda, but he beat him to it, shooting him twice in the chest.
T
he other guy recovered enough to charge, and Amanda whacked him in the head with the side of her pistol, managing to connect his nose again. He went down without a sound this time, and stayed there. Meanwhile, Harvey grabbed his gun from the floor. He looked over and caught a glimpse of Colon climbing through the window, out to the fire escape.
“He’s getting away!”
Colon fired at him, missing. Harvey was about to fire back, but Colon ducked out of sight. Harvey rushed to the window, leaned out, and pulled the trigger, bullets pinging off the fire escape’s iron railing. He was so pissed that he expended his whole clip.
“Goddamit!” Harvey yelled. “He got away.”
“That was Colon, I’m assuming,” Amanda said. “Was he in on the robbery?”
“Sounds like it.” He glanced around the room, and walked over to a dresser in the corner, picking up a mass of hair and rubber. It was a gorilla mask. “Make that definitely.” He threw it to the floor with a curse.
“Well, now that we know who he is, we’ll get him,” Amanda said. “Let’s put an APB out. I mean, if you think that’s the appropriate thing to do. You’re the boss.” She looked strange. Like she was… sorry. “I owe you an apology, Harvey.”
Holy crap, he thought.
“For what?” he said aloud. “Bursting in here and saving my fat Irish ass?”
“I’m sure you would’ve wound up on top, with or without me.”
Okay, that’s stretching it, Harvey thought, but he didn’t want to admit that he’d been prepared to meet his maker.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s probably true.”
The thug who was still breathing was struggling, getting to his feet.
“It’s not easy for me to admit I’m wrong,” Amanda said. “I mean, if you haven’t picked up on that by now. But I was out of line before.” As she spoke, she delivered a well-aimed kick to the back of the thug’s head, making it look effortless, knocking him out again. Harvey reassessed the wisdom of pissing her off.
“I’m the rookie and you’ve been doing this for years,” she continued. “It was wrong of me to question your judgment, and to threaten you with a report. I can learn a lot by working with you, I’m sure.”
She sounded sincere, though Harvey wasn’t sure if he bought what she was saying. Maybe not a hundred percent. Maybe she was afraid he’d spread word around the GCPD that she was a rat, and that it could cost her job—or maybe her life. Whatever the truth, whether it was sincere or bullshit, he was glad she’d shown up when she did. Or he’d probably be checking into heaven right now. Well, if he was lucky.
“No harm, no foul,” Harvey said. “By the way, I liked the hooker routine. If you did that next time with a schoolgirl skirt, I might really enjoy myself.” He paused to see how she’d react.
“Hey, watch it,” Amanda said, playing along. “You don’t want me reporting you for harassment, do you?”
“Jeez, how many complaints are you gonna file?” He chuckled, and looked around the room—searching under the bed, in the closet, behind the furniture. “I mean talk about a laundry list. I take kickbacks, I harass you, I drink. What else you got on me?”
“I’m sure you have other endearing qualities I have yet to discover,” she said, and she smiled a little. He thought she might finally be getting with the program.
“Well, no Picasso here,” Harvey said. “Nothing to tell us where it might be—no business card, no phone number, no treasure map. So maybe the third robber has it. The zombie.” He glanced at the bodies on the floor. The one with the bullet wounds in his chest was very dead, his wide-open eyes staring at infinity. The other one was stirring again.
“Or maybe this Neanderthal knows something,” Harvey said.
“Hey, come on, Homo erectus.” Amanda knelt next to the thug and slapped him in the face a couple of times. “Wake up! Get it together.” The guy’s eyes opened and then, remembering what had happened, panic kicked in.
“P-please,” he said. “D-don’t hurt me again.”
“If you answer my questions, maybe I won’t,” Amanda said. “Where were you last night? Were you at Wayne Manor?”
“N-no, I swear I wasn’t.” He looked around, saw the body, and his eyes went wide. “Roberto—he gave us money, hundred bucks each, to be his muscle, that’s all. I met him for the first time, like ten minutes before you came in.”
“Did he say anything about a Picasso?” Amanda asked. “That’s a painting.”
“No, I swear, I don’t know nothing about a painting.” The guy actually looked like he was going to cry. “I-I have a daughter. I w-wanna see my daughter again. Please.”
“He’s probably telling the truth,” Harvey said. “But let’s take him downtown and beat the crap out of him just to make sure.”
Amanda started to laugh, then stifled it.
“Wait, you’re not kidding, are you?”
Harvey grinned.
“Better add police brutality to my list.”
NINE
“Well, this wasn’t exactly how I’d planned to spend my Saturday,” Thomas said.
He and Karen had just spent three hours digging a hole in the woods behind the house, burying the body. According to the ID found in the dead man’s wallet, his name was Scott Wallace. Thomas had buried the wallet with him, along with Scotty’s cell phone. A thorough search of both didn’t turn up any connection between Wallace and Hugo Strange.
Next, Thomas and Karen had cleaned up the blood in the bedroom, scrubbing the walls and the floors, and Thomas had swept up the broken glass in the front of the cabin, taping cardboard over the gaping hole. He would bring her a new window the next time he visited.
“You can’t go home in those clothes,” Karen said.
She was right, of course. His shirt and pants were covered in mud and blood, and he couldn’t let Martha, Bruce, Alfred, or anyone else find out about his expedition.
“I have a T-shirt in my trunk,” Thomas said, “from the last Wayne company picnic. My pants are a bigger problem, though.”
“I can wash them for you,” Karen said.
“But how can you dry them? The sun is going down soon and you don’t have a clothes dryer here.”
“True, but I do have a hair dryer.”
He finally relented, and while Karen washed and dried the slacks, Thomas wore a towel around his waist, and a T-shirt which read, “WAYNE ENTERPRISES: THE FUTURE IS NOW.” He cleaned the blood from his shoes, as well. He was driven purely by adrenaline, focused on getting rid of any trace of what had occurred. It hadn’t fully set in what he’d done.
I killed a man, in cold blood.
This wasn’t actually true, he told himself—he had killed Wallace in self-defense. Technically, Wallace had killed himself, yet regardless of the specifics, Thomas had been involved in the death of a human being, and now he was trying to hide the evidence.
The devil is in the details.
* * *
A short time later he was dressed again in his cleaned clothes, having tea with Karen. They were seated across from each other in the living area—Karen on the couch, Thomas in the chair.
“I feel like the harder I try to dig out of the trouble of my past, the deeper I fall into it,” he commented. “I mean, I drove out here to make sure you were safe, and I wound up killing a man, snuffing out his life, then burying his body. A man who wouldn’t have been here had it not been for me.”
“Stop saying that,” Karen protested. “He was trying to kill you, and me, and you had no choice but to bury the body.”
“I used to be a decent, honorable man.”
“You still are a decent, honorable man.”
“The whole situation feels so surreal,” Thomas said. “How did I sink to this level?”
“Surely you’ve seen killing before,” Karen said. “Weren’t you in the army?”
“No,” Thomas said. “I was in college during the draft. Was involved with a private army several years ago, but I had a hands-off role.”
Thomas nodded.
“Trust me,” Karen said, “killing is like diving into a swimming pool for the first time. After you’ve done it once, it gets easier.”
“Who did you kill besides your parents?” Thomas asked.
Karen cringed for a moment, obviously the effect of some dark memory.
“In prison, there were situations where I had to defend myself,” Karen said, “but because I felt justified, I felt no guilt afterward. That made it easier, too.”
“I don’t exactly feel any guilt,” Thomas said, remembering how Wallace had tried to shoot him. “I’m not sure what I feel, but that isn’t it. Burying the evidence makes me feel vaguely ghoulish, though.”
“It was necessary,” Karen asserted. “What else could we have done? Call the police and tell them that someone from Pinewood sent a man to kill me, one of their former patients, and you as well?”
“We don’t know for certain that Scotty Wallace was connected to Pinewood.”
“Oh, come on, what other explanation could there be? In all the years I’ve been in this cabin, no other person has ever shown up, ever, and suddenly one shows up right after you arrive. It’s too convenient.”
They were skirting too close to the truth, to what Thomas had suspected since the break-in. This woman had just helped him bury a dead man. How could he not open up to her, and tell her everything?
“Okay, you’re right,” he relented. “This must be Pinewood related.” Thomas paused, then decided that the direct approach was best. “I think the man in charge may be starting experiments again.”
“What’s his name?” Karen asked.
“You know I can’t tell you that,” Thomas said. “It’s for your—”
“—own protection. I know.” Karen stared at him for a few seconds, not blinking at all. He didn’t think he saw fear in her eyes, but there was… anger?