“Uh—yes, sure,” Bruce said with that same, distracted air Vicki had heard when they had first spoken. “Open six.”
The steward pivoted smartly and left the room. Bruce Wayne blinked, as if he was trying to remember where he was. He turned back to Vicki.
“Yes. Will you be staying in Gotham for a while?”
“I’d like to,” Vicki replied. “I’m intrigued by Allie’s giant-bat story.”
An overdressed couple paused outside the still-open door to the hall. They waved and called good-night to Mr. Wayne, making polite noises about the wonderful party. Bruce nodded politely back, looking for all the world like he didn’t know who they were. His eyes seemed to focus suddenly as he called them both by name. The rich pair waved a final time and departed happily.
Bruce looked back at Vicki.
“Isn’t that a little light after a war in Corto Maltese?”
This time, it took Vicki a second to remember their conversation. Oh, yes. The bat story.
“Light?” she replied with a small, sarcastic edge. “And what do you do for a living?”
There was a discreet cough at the doorway. Vicki looked up to see the butler.
“Sir?” the butler mentioned. “Commissioner Gordon was compelled to leave.”
“Thank you, Alfred,” Bruce said without looking.
“Ahem,” Alfred added somewhat more forcefully. “Sir. Very unexpectedly.”
“Oh,” Bruce replied, looking at the butler at last. “Thank you, Alfred.” That slightly sheepish look was back on his face as he turned to Vicki. “I hope you’ll excuse me.”
He looked right into her eyes. She looked right back into his. They both knew this wasn’t the end of something.
“Sure,” she said.
He looked away. Vicki blinked. It was like some sort of line that held them together had suddenly snapped and she was once again free to look other places in the room.
Bruce put his glass down on the edge of a table and started from the room.
“Sir,” Alfred interrupted, “I think perhaps this way.”
Bruce looked at his butler more alertly. “Oh, yes . . . thanks. Oh, Alfred, they need some more wine in the front and someone named Mrs. Daly wanted a copy of the menu.” He started to walk across the room to the far door. “Oh, and Alfred, give Mr. Knox a grant.”
He winked at Knox as he turned and walked rapidly from the room. Alfred picked up Mr. Wayne’s glass and effortlessly caught up with his employer in the far doorway. The butler shut the door behind them.
Knox stared at the closed door. “Nice talkin’ to you, Bruce.” He glanced at Vicki. “Now, are the rich odd? Yes, they are.” He waited for a moment, then added: “Hello? Vicki?”
She realized she was still half looking at the door where Bruce Wayne had disappeared. “Sorry, I was . . .” She tried to gather her thoughts. “He’s comp-lic-ated.” She said at last, slowing the syllables as if the new emphasis would explain it all.
“I said odd,” Knox insisted. Vicki realized there might be a little jealousy there.
“Mmm,” was her answer.
“Ah,” Knox replied, totally dissatisfied. “Well, you’re not the only fan around here. This guy loves himself. There are mirrors in every room.”
Vicki realized Knox was right. There had been huge mirrors on two walls of the grand ballroom. And here were the two of them, standing before another mirror, eight feet wide, that ran from floor to ceiling.
“Bruce Wayne,” Allie added sarcastically. “Maybe it should be Bruce Vain.”
If you only knew, Mr. Knox. Bruce Wayne took a final moment to watch Vicki and the reporter in the video monitor. The state-of-the-art surveillance camera had silently recorded everything in the armory from behind the oneway glass of the full-length mirror. Of course, it was only one of three dozen monitors, designed to record everything that happened in and around Wayne Manor. And it was one of those other monitors that demanded his attention.
Guests moved backward with exaggerated speed as Wayne rewound the tape. Ah. He punched a button on the console before him. This is what he wanted.
A patrolman talked to Commissioner Gordon on the screen.
“—anonymous tip,” the patrolman was saying. “Napier’s cleaning out Axis Chemical.”
“Good Lord,” Gordon replied, excited and agitated at the same time. “If we could put our hands on him, we’d have Grissom! Why wasn’t I told about this? Who’s in charge of the—”
“Eckhardt, sir.”
Gordon blanched. “Oh, my God—” He reached over and grabbed his coat.
The screen went blank.
Bruce Wayne smiled. This was just what he needed. He stood and walked back out into the cave.
It was time.
CHAPTER FOUR
Jack didn’t like this one bit. He hadn’t had to handle this kind of a job in years. Breaking and entering, petty theft—you paid guys to do those things for you, and you expected those guys to take the fall if they got caught.
But Jack still worked for Grissom. For now, he had to do what the Boss told him. He wasn’t ready to make his move in that department—yet.
There was something about this job that made him want to move that much sooner.
The break-in had gone fine so far. His boys had driven up in their unmarked vans and taken out the guards without any trouble at all. They had dismantled the burglar alarms in a matter of seconds, the safe was exactly where Grissom had said it should be, and the guy with the blowtorch would have it open in a minute or less. So why was Jack so uneasy?
Part of that was simple to answer. Even though he had always had a way with chemistry, Jack had never liked fumes. But now, even with his silk handkerchief over his nose and mouth, he could still feel the noxious gases in this place seeping into his lungs. But there was something else wrong here, something that didn’t quite fit. Jack had had that funny feeling ever since he had been in Grissom’s office and turned over a joker instead of a jack.
The safecracker flicked off his torch. He reached out with an asbestos glove and opened the door.
“Empty,” he announced.
Shit! Jack thought. He had known it.
That’s when the alarms went off.
“We’ve been ratted out here, boys!” Jack yelled to his cronies. “Let’s get out of this mess!”
He led the way out of the office, an office two stories above the refinery floor. This whole deal got worse the more he thought about it. They were sitting ducks up here. And Jack had the feeling there’d be enough guns waiting down below for a shooting gallery.
“Freeze!” someone yelled from the floor of the refinery. Jack glanced down. It was a cop, of course. One of a dozen or so cops Jack could see. Just like there were bound to be more cops outside the building and around the vans. Cops who had to have been here even before the alarms went off, cops who had been fed some very special information from very high in the Grissom organization. Jack knew that some of these cops probably had very special instructions, too. He knew all too well how Grissom operated. After all, how many times had Jack personally carried out the Boss’s instructions?
If he didn’t get out of here fast, Jack Napier was a dead man. He had gotten himself caught in a classic setup. When Grissom wanted to get rid of you, he made sure it was done right.
A couple of Jack’s gunmen shot down at the cops. The cops jumped for cover, but a second later they opened up as well, bullets from a dozen guns spraying among the ceiling pipes.
Half the guys ducked back into the office. But that was suicide—there was no other way out from there. The only escape was across the catwalks. Jack yelled for the others to follow him. Then he ran.
Bullets flew past him, embedding themselves in the pipes cluttered all around. Fluids burst forth from dozens of new holes; liquids in every unnatural shade of green and red and purple and brown rained down across the catwalks. Who knew what that stuff was, or what it could do to you? Jack ran through the poisonous downpour, careful no
t to slip on the wet metal underneath his feet. He would just have to hope that he could wash the chemicals off before they did any permanent damage—
There was a great clang as a bullet ricocheted off a metal railing inches from his hand.
—that is, Jack reflected, if something else didn’t damage him first.
He’d get to the bottom of this, even if he had to shoot Eckhardt personally.
Commissioner Gordon nodded to one of his men. He’d brought fifty along, all handpicked, to make sure this job was done right. His lieutenant punched the button.
Luck was with them. The electricity was still working. The huge, corrugated steel door rose with a metallic groan to show the loading dock of the Axis Chemical Company.
There were policemen on the other side of the door, officers who looked around in confusion at the new opening. Eckhardt was in the middle of the cops. The commissioner wondered what kind of excuse the lieutenant would have this time.
“What the hell is going on here?” Gordon roared.
The commissioner marched forward. He wanted the men to recognize him, to stop any accidental gunfire. Eckhardt might be crooked, but most, if not all, of the other men were just regular cops trying to do their job.
Eckhardt had gone too far this time. Not that they wouldn’t have gotten him—eventually. There had been an internal investigation going on concerning certain officers on the force suspected of taking money from Boss Grissom. Eckhardt had been on the top of that list. They had been days away from pinning the charges on him. Now, Gordon thought, they might be able to make those charges stick in a matter of minutes.
Gordon walked quickly through the crowd. Eckhardt stared at him, trying to look angry. But, underneath that anger, Gordon could see the fear.
The commissioner wished he knew exactly what Eckhardt was up to. According to their informer, Napier was being set up. For some reason, Grissom must want Napier put out of the way, and was using Eckhardt and the Gotham City Police Force to do it. Whatever that reason was, it made Napier all that much more valuable to Gordon and the D.A.’s case against Grissom and his associates.
Lieutenant Eckhardt yelled as the commissioner approached. “Christ, what are you trying to do? Blow the collar?”
But Gordon had had enough of Eckhardt.
“I’m in charge here. Not Carl Grissom.”
The anger evaporated from Eckhardt’s face. He looked like a frightened rabbit facing a wolf.
Gordon raised his voice as he turned to the other policemen.
“I want Jack Napier taken alive. I repeat—any man who opens fire on Jack Napier will answer to me!”
He looked around. Eckhardt was gone.
If that’s the way you want to play it, Lieutenant, Gordon thought. One way or another, Eckhardt was going to pay for this. Dent and Borg were going to get their new Gotham City, one way or another.
The commissioner drew his gun and walked into the plant.
Jack be nimble. Jack be quick.
Napier almost laughed as the nursery rhyme rattled through his head. He ran down a final set of metal stairs and landed, still alive, on the cement floor of the Axis Chemical Company.
He had always liked little rhymes and sayings. That’s why he had those special words he always liked to use when he killed people.
You ever danced—
Somebody yelled from across the room. They had spotted him again.
You’re not out of this one yet, Jack boy.
Napier looked around. Time for a little diversion. He had to run a little bit farther before he could jump over that candlestick.
—danced with the devil—
There were a lot of diversions in a chemical factory. Some of them quite deadly. Jack threw a switch here, twisted a dial there, running all the time. The huge machines exploded with sound. Jack couldn’t hear his running feet anymore. He couldn’t even hear the bullets following him. Everything was drowned beneath the automated thunder.
—devil by the pale—
Jack turned a corner and hesitated only long enough to throw another switch or two. Or three. The floor was shaking with the noise now. It felt like the whole place was going to fall apart. Jack realized they probably never had all these machines operating at the same time—until now. Giant vats of chemicals spun overhead, spilling their contents into even larger basins on either side of him.
—the pale moonlight?
Machines roaring, acids bubbling, people screaming, bullets flying—it all made a very special sort of chaos. Jack decided he liked chaos. It certainly made it easier for him to get away. And, once he was free, he had a little business to attend to.
Grissom gets the police. The police try to get Jack. But Jack gets Grissom instead. Napier grinned at how tidy a package it made. It was all a little game.
You ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?
Machines and bullets and screams and fumes. He wasn’t free yet. And if he didn’t get free, he could never get even. And that wouldn’t be fair at all.
In that case, Jack decided, it was more than a game. Now it was all one big, never-ending joke.
Gordon thought he was walking into hell. The gunfire echoed back and forth through the cavernous room, punctuating half-heard human cries, some of anger, some of pain. The air smelled of smoke and acid. The place was huge, and lit by floodlights some fifty feet above the floor. It wasn’t the best way to light a place this size. The spots bounced all too brightly from the pipes and machines high above the ground, but down here on the floor they did little more than produce a confusion of shadows. Axis Chemical probably thought they were giving enough illumination for their night watchmen. They probably never suspected they’d have to fight a war.
Someone screamed on a catwalk far overhead. Gordon saw the figure slump back against the railing, a gun falling with a clang from unresisting fingers. There were others up on the catwalks. Gordon could see two others silhouetted in the spots, running from their dead companion. He couldn’t see who was firing from the floor. He assumed it had to be some of his men.
Gordon caught the hint of movement farther overhead, the glimmer of light against metal, a flash of yellow in the dark. There was an audible clang as a pair of boots hit the metal catwalk. Someone else was up there now, lost in the shadows between the lights.
The two gunmen must have seen the newcomer more clearly than Gordon could. They didn’t consider him a friend. One of the hoods ran back the other way. The other pointed his gun at the newcomer.
But the newcomer was moving too, lifting a weapon, shooting—but not a bullet. Gordon could have sworn it was some kind of short spear, as it hooked into the gunman’s jacket, spinning him around. The hood lost his balance. He dropped his gun as he grabbed for the railing. But he was slipping too fast. He screamed as he fell from the catwalk—
—and stopped, thirty feet in the air, the hook in his jacket attached to a rope, a rope that went back up to the catwalk, and a man who had stepped out into the light.
“Oh, my God,” Gordon whispered. He could see the new figure clearly now.
It was a man dressed as a bat.
Jack felt as if he had been running forever. There had to be some way out of here. He headed for the far end of the factory floor, hoping to find some kind of emergency exit.
A motor started up in front of him, from a switch he hadn’t thrown. A huge, steel door started to rise not twenty feet away. Jack stopped. Maybe this was his ticket out of here.
He gave up that idea before the door had reached his waist. It was the twenty pairs of legs he saw on the other side that dissuaded him—twenty pairs all dressed in police blue. He heard gunfire on the floor behind him. Where could he go now? He heard the police shouting to each other on the other side of the door.
Jack decided to take the stairs. If he couldn’t find a door, maybe he could find a window. But those cops behind him were awfully close.
Then Jack spotted the fire ax. Maybe it was time for another div
ersion. There was that skull and crossbones by the stairs, the one on that rusted steel tank that bore the words DANGER! HIGHLY TOXIC!
Yes, Jack thought. This would do quite nicely. He swung the ax with every ounce of adrenaline-pumped strength in him. The blade cut neatly into the tank’s largest patch of rust, and when he yanked the ax free, toxic waste burst forth to flood the floor.
The cops fled, running into each other in their haste to escape. Mission accomplished. Jack threw his weapon to the ground, staring with fascination for a moment at the bubbles that formed as the viscous fluids ate away the ax handle. He climbed the stairs, hidden from the shooting by two more of the great metal tanks.
There was another sound here, besides the guns and machines, a great, whooshing sound—the noise of rushing water. Jack realized he must be near the sluice gates, the place where Axis Chemical dumped those fine byproducts that made Gotham’s East River what it was today. He looked toward the noise and saw an open window.
The stairs and this end of the catwalk were in shadow. But to reach that window, he’d have to pass beneath two spotlights, a real moving target. Jack couldn’t see any other way. If this was all a joke, it was time to get to the punchline. He ran.
And he was at the window. Not a single shot was fired. All of Jack’s diversions must have worked. He had only to climb the railing, and then—
Somebody grabbed him. Black-clad arms snaked around Jack’s rib cage, reaching for his neck. The jerk was trying to get him in some sort of goddamned wrestling hold.
“Jesus!” Jack yelled as he tried to break free. Who was this guy?
“Hold it!” yelled a voice down on the floor.
What now? Jack despaired. He had almost gotten out of here. Then he looked down and saw the speaker was his old friend Bob, with a gun pointed neatly at the police commissioner. Good old Bob.
“Let him go, or I’ll do Gordon,” Bob announced. Good old Bob had always had a way with words.
Jack saw Eckhardt down below. Of course! Who else could Grissom get to do this dirty work? Well, once Jack got out of this, he and the fat boy had a little business.
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