He handed Vicki Alicia’s porcelain mask, now defaced with an ugly crack.
The Joker shrugged. “But you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs!”
Vicki looked horrified. Maybe, the Joker reflected, after they left the van, he should trap her in an even smaller space.
He grinned at her anyway. Just call him a romantic fool!
The Joker’s van was down below. It had sped from traffic jam to traffic jam. So far, with the aid of his utility belt and some quick runs across rooftops, he had managed to keep the van in sight. Sometimes you could keep up with the scum if gridlock was on your side.
The van swerved around a mounted policeman. The horse turned around; the cop riding it seemed to have no control over his mount. He swayed back and forth in the saddle and looked around as if he was having trouble keeping the world in focus.
Batman had seen other cops like this since he started to chase the Joker, and still other policemen who were out cold. It was the Joker’s doing, of course. But what would the Joker do when he had immobilized all of Gotham’s finest?
Batman would have to worry about that when he discovered the Joker’s plans. But the villain’s van had hit a relatively uncongested stretch of road and was increasing the distance between them. And there was a cop here, about to fall off his horse and possibly hurt himself.
There was only one thing to do.
Batman landed on the back of the horse. The cop turned to look at him, slowly and without surprise, as if having somebody land on the back of your horse was an everyday occurrence. He smiled sadly and shook his head as he massaged his throat. His eyes slid closed.
The cop passed out, the smile still on his face. He started to fall. Batman caught him and eased him from his horse, making sure the cop landed on the sidewalk. It wouldn’t do any good to have people sleeping in the street.
Batman glanced at the utility belt, which he had tightened around his suit at the waist. The red light was blinking. Good. Maybe things would be in order again very shortly.
He urged the horse forward. He had a van to catch.
He finally saw the van ahead. He had had to ride almost all the way to Gotham Square to catch up. The Joker’s van screeched to a halt a block and a half away, almost colliding with the barricades.
Barricades? He had forgotten. Today was the day of the mayor’s big parade—the two hundredth anniversary of Gotham City. Could that have something to do with the Joker’s plans?
His horse reared as more brakes screamed behind him. He looked around and saw the yellow Volkswagen. Good. Alfred’s timing, as usual, was impeccable.
He dismounted and quickly climbed into the passenger seat. Alfred handed him one of the spare costumes. He immediately started to change. It was a little cramped in here, but he had practiced this maneuver dozens of times for this eventuality.
“Alfred,” he said after he had taken off the ski mask, “find the records on my family. I want to check something.”
“Yes, sir,” Alfred replied. “Be careful.”
He nodded as he climbed back out of the Volkswagen, once again clothed as he should be—as the Batman.
He jumped on his horse and rode to Gotham Square.
The junior high school band was playing “Happy Birthday.” They weren’t playing it very well, of course, which made it even better, what with those red, white, and blue birthday banners flapping overhead. And then the mayor, standing pompously up there on his pompous reviewing stand, along with those other pillars of the community, Dent and Gordon—the mayor started to speak, in that way only the mayor could.
“Happy birthday, Gotham City! You know every city has a father, and no one could have been a better father than John T. Gotham!”
This was just too good! It was time to get out of the van and join the festivities. The mayor went on, in that way the mayor did, about all the wonderful attributes he imagined Gotham City had. The Joker made sure that Bob—good old Bob—brought Vicki along. After all the inconvenience they’d put her through, he didn’t want her to miss all the fun.
The Joker and his boys pushed their way through the crowd. The mayor waved his flabby hands at the canvas-covered statue at the platform’s side.
“I dedicate this statue,” the mayor continued in that continuing way of his, “of a man who embodies the past, present, and future of our great city.”
Could this be any more perfect? The Joker almost wished he could make some noise, but he wouldn’t want to distract anyone from the ceremonies.
The mayor pulled the cord. The canvas dropped away.
What? Imagine the Joker’s surprise. It wasn’t a statue of John T. Gotham after all. No, this statue’s subject was much more handsome—well, actually, the Joker had no idea at all what John T. Gotham looked like, and, what’s more, he really didn’t care—not when you had a magnificent statue like that to look at! There it was, in the finest Gothic postmodern neorealistic expressionistic style—the Joker!—waving a lovely pair of Uzis just like they were six-shooters. What a sense of style! What finesse! Here was a piece of art that really spoke to you!
The Joker couldn’t have been prouder if he’d sculpted the thing himself. Which, after all, he had.
He turned to Vicki. Bob—good old Bob—had made sure she was holding her camera.
“Start shootin’, my sweet,” the Joker yelled as he took the stage. “I’m makin’ history!”
“Sorry!” He waved apologetically to the crowd as he stepped up next to the mayor. “No autographs!”
The mayor appeared less than pleased to see him. Maybe it was because the Joker had switched the statues. Or maybe it was because the Joker was holding a real Uzi pointed at the mayor’s belly. Whatever his problem was, the mayor just didn’t want to give the Joker the microphone. The Joker had to take the mike for himself.
“C-call the police!” The normally verbose mayor seemed to have lost his way with words. Perhaps the Joker could help him along.
“What police?” he asked sweetly. He waved at the policemen, unconscious on the sidewalk, and more policemen, equally unconscious on the grass, and even more policemen, completely out cold at the base of the statue. The mayor stared, goggle-eyed, at his entire police force, lying down on the job! Poor Borg. That sort of thing seemed to take away his voice entirely.
Well, someone had to pick up the slack here. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of city dwellers had shown up for this little celebration, and the Joker wouldn’t want any of them to get bored. Heavens forfend! If they left now, they would miss the parade!
The Joker smiled out over the crowd—his crowd. As their beloved mayor had said as he unveiled his handsome statue, he was the past, present and—most certainly—the future of Gotham City, whether they wanted him or not! This was his moment of triumph!
Ah, but triumph was no good unless you shared it with someone. He spoke into the mike:
“Hi, there, fellow Gothamites! As the next founding father of this fair city, I declare these celebrations well and truly open!”
He raised his Uzi into the air and fired a quick burst of bullets in celebration. Overhead, half the banner shook loose, riddled by bullet fire. Oh, dear. Clumsy, clumsy Joker. Give him a gun, and see what he does?
The Joker laughed, loud and long. This was the best time ever!
But something else was going on, down in the crowd. People were screaming—Come on now! Don’t be impatient! That isn’t supposed to happen until later!—and pointing up toward the roof on the far side of the square. Roof? Who did the Joker know in high places?
That’s when something came hissing through the air to wrap itself around the head of the statue—the Joker’s statue! It looked like one of those things they used in South America—bounce, bilbo, it was on the tip of the Joker’s tongue—bolo, that’s what they called them, made of two balls attached by a rope. Except, in this case, the hissing noise was coming from the balls! That meant it had to be a bolo bomb!
The crowd was
screaming and running away. Just when the Joker was warming up, too! And the Joker knew the creep responsible for this, even before he saw him on the rooftop.
It was the Batman.
Now?
Boy, that guy sure knew how to spoil a party!
That’s when the bombs went off. Nice explosion. And when the smoke cleared . . .
The Joker head was gone.
“My very face,” the Joker whispered. “Destroyed.” He had to admit it. Batman’s toys had come through again. He was impressed.
His boys opened fire on the Batman. The bullets didn’t seem to do any good. Batman shot out a couple of those ropes he was so fond of using, and swung down to the ground between them. The Joker’s boys attacked Batman with their fists. He kicked them aside and headed for their boss.
Oops! The Joker decided it was time for Plan B. When the fancy stuff didn’t work, you went back to the bad-guy basics—threats, violence, murder. You know, the traditional values.
The Joker grabbed the mayor.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Batman was here!
Vicki wanted to yell out loud. She might have, too, if the Joker’s gang wasn’t still surrounding her. She had kept her cool until now, looking for a chance to escape somehow before the Joker had her disfigured or killed. But they had watched her too closely. There had been no chance of doing anything—until now.
The Batman stood on a rooftop across the street. He fired a pair of lines into the grass of Gotham Square and swept down between them, landing only a dozen feet away. The Joker’s goons tried to stop him, first with their guns, then with with their bodies and their fists. Batman got by them as if they weren’t even there.
That’s when the Joker grabbed the mayor. He stuck his revolver against Borg’s temple.
“Damn!” he yelled cheerfully. “I got a good one for you, Batman. What’s red and bloody and has no brains?”
Batman didn’t answer him. He stepped toward the Joker instead. Mayor Borg was sweating and sputtering. The Joker jammed the muzzle tighter against the mayor’s skull.
It looked like the Batman didn’t care what the Joker did. He vaulted up onto the stage and started to walk behind the Joker. The Joker swung the mayor around so that he could watch his adversary’s moves.
“I didn’t know bats came out in the daytime!” he called.
The Batman stopped his circling. He stood staring at the Joker, every muscle knotted and tense, as if he was about to explode.
“Just when murderous clowns leave the circus,” he replied. “Let the mayor go.”
“Aw, can’t I keep him?” the Joker whined. “I’ll feed him! Honest!”
Batman wasn’t particularly impressed by the villain’s sarcasm.
“What do you want from this city?” he demanded.
The Joker looked skyward for an instant, as if lost in thought.
“I want a new bicycle . . . ,” he began slowly. “I want to visit Florida . . . I want—”
This had gone far enough. Vicki had stood here too long as the helpless observer. There was something else she could do—something the Joker had even asked for.
She raised her camera.
“Let me get this, Joker.”
The Joker swiveled both himself and the mayor around for the best possible photo opportunity. Vicki took the picture with the brightest flash gun she had.
Batman snapped his fingers.
“Joker!”
The Joker looked back at him. The Batman was less than three feet away. Somehow, in the instant it had taken Vicki to snap the photo, Batman had crossed the stage. He waved one of his gloved hands. There was something in it—a playing card.
A joker card.
Batman punched the madman in the face as the Joker stared. The mayor fled as the Joker staggered back. He shook it off in an instant, turning his stagger into a dance as the rest of his goons lost themselves in the crowd. Finally, well clear of striking distance, he stopped and grinned at the Batman.
“The odds are even!” he declared. “So I’m a-leavin’! You got your toys—I got mine!”
He jumped onto the statue platform and was instantly surrounded by great plumes of colored smoke. A dozen roman candles flew from the smoke, ascending into the heavens. Batman started for the statue, but stopped before he was halfway across the stage. He knew, Vicki realized, by the time he could reach the statue, the Joker would be gone.
Instead, Batman moved for the corner of Gotham Square, where the Joker had left his van. The goons piled in and took off before he could get off the stage.
Vicki lifted her camera again to take a close-up of the Batman.
“Thanks,” he told her.
“So we’re even,” Vicki replied. “I don’t owe you anything.”
“Whatever you say,” Batman replied neutrally.
What did he mean by that? It was impossible to tell. There was no way you could read somebody’s emotions when half their face was covered by a mask.
Still, maybe she shouldn’t have talked about “being even.” She didn’t realize, until she’d blurted that out, how guilty she still felt about what she had done after the first time he had rescued her. If that’s all she felt about the Batman. Maybe the Batman wasn’t trying to tell her anything at all. Maybe she was trying to tell herself something about the Batman.
It had taken her only a moment to think of all this, but, in that moment, the Batman had shot another line aloft and disappeared, back onto the roofs. Vicki quickly took a photo of his disappearing form.
That was her job, after all.
“And you didn’t have film in the camera?”
She felt bad enough without Allie Knox rubbing it in. She had been under a little duress, after all. But they would have been great shots—no one had gotten a really good close-up of the Batman before. In fact, they still hadn’t gotten a good close-up. It was the kind of mistake a film student would make. She felt terrible about it. How could she explain?
“This goon handed it to me” was the way she tried. “I didn’t check.” How could she tell Allie how shaken she had been, first from the excessive attentions of the Joker, then from the cold reaction of the Batman? She decided she couldn’t.
“Oh, Allie, I’m really losing it” was what she said instead. She sat heavily on the edge of the desk and stared down at her shoes.
Allie took pity on her and didn’t pursue it any further. Instead, he patted her on the shoulder.
“I found out about your strange street corner,” he said softly.
She looked up at him.
“Your friend, Bruce, is pretty screwed up,” he added, a touch of apology in his voice.
Oh, great. This was all she needed to hear.
“More good news?” she asked without much enthusiasm.
He waved to her to follow him across the office, to the microfilm reader. She stood and slowly crossed the room to stand behind him as he twirled the knob on the side of the machine, searching for the proper page.
“Okay,” he said at last. “Here we go.” He stepped out of the way. “Check it out.”
Vicki stared at the screen. This time, Knox had found something important. It was the front page of the Gotham Globe, twenty-odd years ago. A banner headline screamed across the front page:
THOMAS WAYNE MURDERED!
Prominent Doctor, Wife Slain in Robbery
Unidentified Gunman Leaves Child Unharmed
But it was the photograph beneath that headline that told the real story. A pair of cops leaned over a pair of corpses. Behind them, medics stood with stretchers. But off to one side was a young boy, maybe ten years old, his arms wrapped around the waist of another cop. The boy, Vicki realized, was Bruce Wayne. But it was that look on his face—a wild look, full of anger and despair, as if he had gotten a glimpse at the end of the world—that struck her. It was the same look she had seen on Bruce’s face the other day in Gotham Square.
“Some snap, huh?” Knox’s voice pulled her from her reverie.
“Oh, my God,” she said, finding her voice. “His parents were murdered in that alley. That’s why he went there.” She glanced up at Allie before she turned back to Bruce’s photo, drawn to the frightened boy. “It was the anniversary of their death.”
“Yep,” Knox agreed, looking at the screen over her shoulder. “Poor kid watched the whole thing happen.”
“Allie,” she replied, as if speaking the words aloud might force some reason out of them, “the look on his face, it’s just like that day with the Joker, in front of City Hall.”
But why? she asked herself. Could it have been the sudden violence, bringing back the memories? Or was there more than that?
“Can you imagine what this could do to a guy, Vicki?” Knox asked. For a change, there was genuine sympathy in his voice.
She could imagine, but she wasn’t going to tell Allie everything just yet. This could explain a lot about Bruce’s behavior. She remembered seeing that odd belt on the kitchen table. She had been so happy, too, in that moment when she had rushed home from Gotham Square, to find that the Joker hadn’t left a corpse behind.
But there had been no sign of Bruce since—no note, no phone calls, no assurances that he was fine, or any questions after her welfare. Why?
She realized this photo might explain more than just Bruce. She remembered a talk they had had, at Wayne Manor, about finding your true purpose in life.
“Allie,” she asked slowly, trying to keep the question as neutral as possible, “does it say how old the father was . . . when he was killed?”
Knox nodded, like it was the most natural question in the world. “Yeah. I noticed that, too. He was a young guy—just turned thirty-five.”
Thirty-five? Bruce was thirty-five. All her doubts left her. It had to be.
She grabbed her coat and camera bag.
“I’ve got to go. ”
She backed out of Allie’s office.
“Okay!” Knox smiled affably and waved good-bye. “Don’t let your personal feelings interfere with your job!”
Poor Allie. He was still playing the wounded suitor. It was much too late for that.
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