DC Comics novels--Batman

by Christa Faust

  She helped the sobbing intern up to her bruised knees, and took off her own white coat, draping it around the girl’s shuddering shoulders as she pressed a handkerchief against the head wound to staunch the bleeding.

  “I thought…” Harleen said, lifting her anguished, mascara-smeared eyes up to peer at Leland. Then flung herself sobbing into the older woman’s arms. “He said we would be together forever. He said I was special!” The words stretched into a wail.

  Something in the girl’s histrionic tone tickled the needle on Leland’s bullshit detector, but as with the Joker, there was something about this kid that threw her instincts off balance. Besides, this was neither the time nor the place for judgment. She needed to notify security, and get Harleen to the infirmary.

  Then it was going to hit the fan, and most likely multiple heads were going to roll. Perhaps even her own. An incident like this would spawn a media free-for-all, with Quinzel in the spotlight. Dr. Leland hated to see any woman forced go through that particular meat grinder in the wake of an assault.

  Shaking her head, she figured they would cross that bridge when they came to it. She helped the girl to her feet and led her out of the supply closet, focusing on locating a security phone to initiate an emergency lockdown, and then getting poor Harleen some clothes.

  * * *

  Back in her office, Dr. Leland gave the girl her tea to sip, and a bulky brown sweater she kept in her closet for times when the air conditioning was running too high. Sitting at her desk, she was on the phone with the head of security.

  “No, Doctor,” he said. “The Joker is still in his cell. Batman is with him right now.”

  That didn’t make sense. If the Joker was in his cell, then who did she see leaving the facility? The girl was still too upset to talk about what had happened in the closet, softly crying and staring into the tea cup, looking like a small child as she held it with two hands.

  “Then I want a full head count on every ward,” Leland said. “Especially Ward A. Make sure you—”

  “Hang on, Doc,” the head of security cut her off, and she heard someone else talking in the background. “Looks like the baby killer is MIA,” he told her. “His cell is empty.”

  “Kurt Lenk?” Dr. Leland said, frowning. Of all the patients to attempt escape, Kurt was the last one she ever would have guessed. He was so passive, so accepting of his fate, never questioning that he deserved his life sentence at Arkham. There was nothing for him in the outside world. “Are you sure?”

  * * *

  “Hold still, Kurt,” Quinzel said, gripping Lenk’s chin between her fingers as she smoothed whiteface over his flushed cheeks. There wasn’t a lot of room in the closet, and the Joker elbowed her repeatedly as he struggled to pull her too-tight pencil skirt up over thick, suntan-colored pantyhose.

  “Does this escape plan make my ass look big?”

  Harleen giggled and tossed him the long blond wig she’d had inside her massive crocodile purse. She also laid out the size eleven brown leather pumps she’d bought in a specialty store, knowing her own little kitten heels would be worse than useless.

  “Don’t forget to put the foundation on your hands, too,” she said. “After you tie me up, of course.”

  The Joker nodded, pulling a length of stiff, paint-stained nylon rope from a back shelf while she pulled a spiky green Halloween wig over Lenk’s own thinning hair. She wished the cheap wig was curly, like the Joker’s own wild emerald green locks, but it would have to do. Hopefully the dim lighting in the cell, combined with the general laziness of the night staff, would work in their favor. All it had to do was buy him an hour or two. Enough time to disappear into the teeming city.

  The Joker slipped his lanky arms into the white coat she’d been wearing, and then did a little twirl. Everything she’d worn today had been too large for her, and she’d had to cinch it up so no one would notice.

  “How do I look?” he asked.

  “You don’t look like me,” she said, stepping up to press herself against him as she slipped her badge around his neck. “But you don’t look like you either.” He twisted away from her, pushing her back with his elbow.

  “Don’t touch me,” he said, making a sour face. “You’ll ruin it.”

  Stung but not wanting to show it, she turned her attention back to the faux Joker, double checking her makeup job. Kurt stood in the corner like an unplugged automaton, staring down at his shoes. It was almost too easy.

  “He’s good to go,” she said, waving a hand in front of the man’s blank, staring eyes. “Now me. And make it good and tight.”

  The Joker grabbed her arm and spun her to face away from him, cinching her elbows together, and then her wrists. She arched her body against the knots and issued a small, kittenish purr.

  “Knock it off,” the Joker said, pressing her down first to her knees and then to her belly on the cold concrete as he looped her ankles with the rope. “You’re incorrigible.”

  “Whatever you say, Mister J,” she replied with a wink as he tied her ankles to her wrists.

  “Ready?” he asked, holding up a gag made of knotted rags.

  Harleen smiled up at him, and then cracked her forehead sharply against the concrete. Stars danced in her vision and she felt a hot trickle of blood on her temple.

  “I am now,” she replied.

  “Atta girl,” the Joker said with a grin, pressing the dusty knotted rag into her mouth and tying it behind her head.

  She didn’t know what she was hoping for in that moment. That he would pledge his undying love to her, or swear that he would find her on the outside and they would be together forever? But he didn’t say a word. He just slipped his knobby feet into the big heels, rubbed the rest of the tan foundation onto his hands and wrists, and then led their doppelganger away.

  He kicked the closet door shut behind him. It would take under a minute for him to return the fake Joker to his own cell. Then, using the same electronic badge he’d used to open his cell door, he could swipe through security and walk right out the front door.

  In the darkness, she wondered if she would ever see him again.

  26

  Bruce Wayne set the plate with a seared ribeye in front of Alfred Pennyworth, then sat across from him in the wonderfully appointed kitchen.

  Wayne Mansion was grand in the Jacobean and Tudor traditions of dark rubbed woods and stonework, and the kitchen was no exception. From the marble countertops to the Shaker cabinets, brass accouterments, and a spice rack that included a derivative from a plant found only in Nanda Parbat, the kitchen was legendary in architectural circles.

  “Let me know what you think,” Wayne said, looking pensive. In addition to the steak was a plate of grilled asparagus, but no bread or other carbohydrates. Bruce Wayne maintained an athlete’s diet of meat and vegetables. He had prepared this late lunch meal—had even specifically ordered these cuts of meat from the butcher.

  “Oh, I shall.” Pennyworth cut off a piece of his steak and placed it in his mouth.

  When the mansion’s “butler” gave a nod of approval, Wayne dove in, as well. Nearby in a built-in cabinet, a portable television showed the midday news, though it was on mute. There was a report from East Berlin, where police were beating pro-democracy protestors demanding an end to the iron rule of the Soviets.

  The two men silently regarded those events, then resumed eating.

  “How do you do it?” Pennyworth said.

  “What?”

  “Not succumb to temptation,” he answered, pointing at the screen. The news gave way to a commercial for hair care products. “They’re acting under the color of authority—mind you, an authority we would find intolerable here—but we know there are law enforcement professionals who revel in the violence. Become lost in the ardor of brutality.”

  Wayne arched an eyebrow, holding a piece of beef speared on his fork, but remained silent.

  “How does one not get carried away, Master Bruce?” Pennyworth continued. “Maintain the
wherewithal to use just enough force to defeat the foe, yet not give in to the allure of the righteous vanquisher and beat the living daylights out of an opponent. An opponent—I hasten to add—who would display no such discipline, were the situation reversed.

  “What of those who have done far worse, committed far more heinous acts? Who lay awake nights conceiving even more damnable plans of murder and mayhem?” he said. “And for what? At times for profit, but far too often for the sheer sake of, well, evil. You know of whom I speak.”

  “Two-Face, for example,” Wayne said, letting a hint of weariness creep into his voice. “And the Joker.” He placed the meat into his mouth.

  “Indeed,” Pennyworth said. “Yet the righter of wrongs, no matter what uniform he wears, must go ‘by the book,’ as the Commissioner would admonish.” Pennyworth took a bite of the vegetable and wouldn’t have minded a dry cabernet to go with the meal. Since the master of the house had prepared the meal, however, they both drank seltzer. Club soda contains too much sodium.

  Wayne chewed for a moment, perhaps metaphorically.

  “If I really wanted to end crime in Gotham,” he said, “why not hire an assassin like Deadshot, pay him to put high velocity rounds through the heads of Jeremiah Arkham or Victor Fries, or rig one of Oswald Cobblepot’s trick umbrellas to blow his head off? Wouldn’t that solve the problem, on a more permanent basis?”

  “Ah, then I’m not the only one to have contemplated such scenarios,” Pennyworth commented.

  Wayne deferred a response and chewed thoughtfully.

  “What is it that persuades us not to give in to tactics like those?” he asked finally. “Is it the individual, whatever is inside of them, the raw material, so to speak, or is it a quality instilled in them by their training and experience?”

  “I’m no stranger to such a regimen,” Pennyworth said, thinking back to his time with MI5. “No amount of training can prevent you from crossing the line, if the strength of character is absent. Indeed, some use their training as an excuse to commit all sorts of heinous acts.”

  “Ability doesn’t always equal ideals,” Wayne agreed. “We’ve seen those who abuse the gifts given to them. A closer look reveals feet of clay.”

  Pennyworth nodded. Even Batman was subject to such scrutiny, he knew.

  Bruce Wayne had received his training from some of the finest the world had to offer, the detective Henri Ducard and martial artist Shihan Matsuda among them. Though Ducard was a man with remarkable skills, the Frenchman’s cavalier outlook concerning the use of force had driven a wedge between student and teacher.

  “Yet you have to persist,” Pennyworth noted, “adhere to your principles even as you thwart these villains for whom death and destruction are both goals and ways of life.”

  “Death always shadows the work we do, Alfred,” Wayne replied. “There’s no escaping it.”

  Pennyworth stared at his food. “I know the dead haunt you, no matter how righteous your actions may be.”

  Wayne regarded him. “Maybe that’s what it is then, Alfred,” he said. “No matter what the rationalization, no matter how certain we may be that the fatal decision is justified, there’s no taking it back.” He paused, looking past the walls. “No matter how clear the evil may seem to be, if we allow ourselves to take the shortcut, to give in to the permanent solution—there’d be no turning back. We’d be no better than those we hunt.”

  “Then how do you account for your Justice League colleague, the Spectre?” Pennyworth countered. “He seems rather content at bloodthirsty resolutions. Perhaps it’s the utterly white face, eh?”

  Wayne smiled ruefully.

  “Or the Commissioner, for that matter,” Pennyworth persisted. “Certainly there was a time when he found himself forced to take lives, in order to protect the innocent. What might he say?”

  “We can only choose one path at a time,” Wayne replied. “Once we’ve chosen it, we can’t judge the results until we’ve reached the end. But who can say when our journey is done?”

  “Are you quoting Master Chu?”

  “A Saturday morning cartoon show,” Wayne said, his expression unreadable. “About a mystery-solving dog.”

  Dryly, “Yes, of course…”

  Pennyworth took another bite of steak.

  NOW

  27

  Evening, and Gavin Kovaks sat in his shack leafing through a months-old issue of Beaver Hunt while a baseball game played on his portable radio. He paused for the umpteenth time on the two-page pictorial of Suzi Mustang, displaying her assets in the “Girls of Striptease” special section. Man, that chick not only got a rise out of him, but sent him into orbit. What he wouldn’t give to spend some time with her.

  Not just to get his hands all over her, like some back-alley creep. No sir, wine her and dine her, show the lady a good time. Shit, back in the day he sported fine threads and Italian loafers.

  Now look at him, dressing like a stooge.

  Wistfully staring off into space, he took a sip of gin from a plastic bottle, and dully noted that the Gotham Knights had loaded up the bases against the visiting Central City Diamonds. The sound of a car cut in, the growl of its engine barely audible at first. It grew louder until he could hear the tires on gravel, then the engine cut. This had to be the prospect one of his old CIs had sent—with the promise of a finder’s fee, of course. If he played it right, what with Grissom being out of town, maybe he could get this mark to pony up an advance, and he’d be on the first train out of Gotham.

  He looked out the window.

  “Aw, crap.”

  The car was an old 1940s-era Hudson, long and rounded and low to the ground like a giant beetle. It was fully restored and painted a deep purple.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “The goddamn Joker.” Instinctively he glanced around the shack, trying to remember where he’d stashed his revolver. Maybe if he came out shooting…

  But no, that grinning maniac had proven too much of a survivor—and frankly, after years of boozing, his aim wasn’t what it used to be. So far no one had gotten out of the car, but Kovaks knew there was no avoiding the inevitable.

  A wind had kicked up outside, stirring dead leaves and trash. He hunched into his jacket and put on his hunting cap with the ear flaps. Best to act like a simpleton, he figured. He took another gulp of his gin and stepped outside, a shit-eating grin on his face.

  “Hello there.”

  The high-pitched voice came from his left.

  “Je-zus,” he said, quickly twisting sideways. The Joker stood right next to him. He was dressed mostly in purple, including the trench coat that protected him from the steady drizzle that had begun. Sporting a cane, he wore a flat-brimmed hat, a light string tie, and spats.

  Jeez, spats!

  Kovaks played it dumb, like he planned.

  “Yes, sir,” the ex-cop said. “I understand you’re in the market for an investment. Well, let me assure you, this place can bring in the dough—the money I mean. It’s a sure thing.” Did he sound nervous? “Everybody likes to laugh and have a good time, right?”

  “Indeed, I’m all about a good time,” the Joker said. His teeth were insanely big, like a hyena’s.

  “Hey, let’s take a look around, okay?” Kovaks said. “Let me turn on the lights, so we can see.” He scurried away to the electrical shack, and when he returned to the car the Joker was nowhere to be seen.

  Where is he?

  Hands deep in his pockets he looked everywhere, jumping at shadows, but there was no sign of the man. As he did, he realized just how much the place had fallen into ruin. He was about to return to his shack when there was movement just off of the midway, and he spotted the tall, lean figure standing there, leaning on his cane. He’d taken off his hat, and didn’t seem to notice the pelting drops.

  “Ah!” he said, trying not to sound nervous. “There you are! Have you had a chance to inspect the property and decide if it’s what you’re looking for?”

  The Joker peered at the carni
val, hand on one hip.

  “Well, it’s garish, ugly, and derelicts have used it for a toilet,” he said, and Kovaks’ heart sank. “The rides are dilapidated to the point of being lethal, and could easily maim or kill innocent children.”

  “Oh,” Kovaks said, “so you don’t like it.”

  The Joker turned to him, a look of delight playing across his face.

  “Don’t like it?” he said. “I’m crazy for it.”

  They walked along the perimeter, passing old, torn carnival posters advertising the “2-Headed Baby” and the “3-Legged Man.” As they did, the Joker seemed to glide along, his feet somehow not crunching on leaves or the hard-packed ground. About half of the lights were lit, casting dark shadows at crazy angles as they passed the carousel and the dilapidated Ferris Wheel with its uppermost gondolas swinging in the wind.

  “You…? You really want to buy it?” Kovaks said. “And the price I mentioned isn’t too steep?” He followed in the Joker’s wake.

  “Too steep?” the thin man said with mock incredulousness. “My dear sir, as I look at it, I’m making a killing…

  “…and anyway, money isn’t really a problem,” he added. “Not these days.”

  Yes! Kovaks thought. It was music to his ears. He knew the Joker had to have money stashed away. Maybe lots of it. Now if he could just close the deal…

  They paused at the entrance to the House of Fun. “How about a walk through?” Kovaks suggested, drawing closer.

  The Joker looked down at the shorter man, that damnable grin so wide on his pasty face. His hair ruffled in the stiff breeze.

  “Yes, let’s.” He wiggled his green brows, like a vaudeville comic.

  * * *

  When they came back outside, the Joker paused at one of the machines, the “Laughing Clown.” He reached out a gloved hand, and a dark look passed over his face.

  Oh, shit, Kovaks thought, he’s gonna back out. He had to do something, so he climbed onto a kids’ ride—a googly-eyed pink elephant mounted on a giant spring. Swaying back and forth on it, he tried to sound enthusiastic.