Batman 1 - Batman (15 page)

W
AR OF THE FREAKS! the headline screamed. JOKER AND BATMAN CLASH AT FLUEGELHEIM!

War of the Freaks? What publicity! The Joker had thought it had been perfection itself, until they had brought him the evening edition of the
Globe.
“War of the Freaks” had moved down to the lower right-hand corner, supplanted by a new banner headline:

BATMAN CRACKS JOKER’S POISON CODE!
Citizens Told to Avoid the Following Products?

The TV chattered away with
On-The-Spot Action News:

“Avoid the following combinations,” Peter McElroy read solemnly. “Deodorants with baby powder, hair spray, and Odor-eaters.” He went down a list, citing every tried and true combination the Joker had devised, and even a couple he hadn’t thought of.

“Safe products are flying in as Gotham City goes on a forced fast,” the newscaster continued. “And all of Gotham is wondering what to make of Batman. Friend or foe?”

It was the Joker’s turn to scream. Couldn’t those
On-The-Spot Action
idiots get anything right? After all the Joker’s clever planning, hours and hours putting together the very best designer deaths, those TV fools were wondering about the Batman?

“I have given a name to my pain,” he screamed to his roomful of lackeys, “and it is Batman!”

He pulled out a sawn off shotgun and blasted the television screen into little pieces. A few of his lackeys seemed a bit surprised by that. Didn’t they know too much television was bad for you?

The Joker leapt to his feet and walked from the room, pushing the door violently out of his way as he entered the factory.

Bob—good old Bob, always there when you needed him—hurried to keep up.

“Bob, you got to possess strength,” the Joker began, warming to his subject, “greater strength to inflict greater pain! We’ve got a Batman to kill!” His hands made enthusiastic strangling motions. “And I want to clean my claws!”

His eyes would no longer focus on the maps. There was only so long, Bruce realized, he could go without sleep, depending on action and caffeine to keep him awake. But there had to be a pattern in the Joker’s movements—something hidden in these maps that would lead to his secret factory. If only he could concentrate enough to put all the pieces together.

He glanced up as Alfred put a new cup of coffee in front of him. The butler took a step back, then cleared his throat, a sure sign that he was going to speak his mind.

“Sir,” Alfred began. “Miss Vale called again. I don’t know what you intend to do about her, but I think your present course of action may just strengthen her resolve. She’s quite tenacious.”

Bruce exhaled slowly. As usual, Alfred was right.

“I know, Alfred,” he agreed, allowing the butler to go about his business. He glanced back at the maps. Maybe he had to get away from them for a while before he could see a pattern—give his subconscious mind, at least, a chance to rest.

Besides, there was something else bothering him.

He had left some unfinished business—something all too fitting with that “millionaire playboy” image he used for a disguise. But he never wanted his disguises to hurt an innocent. He certainly didn’t want to hurt Vicki Vale.

And neither Bruce Wayne nor Batman liked to leave things undone.

Who could that be?

Vicki walked quietly to her apartment door and looked through the spyhole.

It was the last person on earth she expected to see—at least at this point.

It was Bruce Wayne.

She unlocked the door and opened it enough for her to see Bruce clearly.

“Well,” she said more calmly than she felt, “if it isn’t the invisible man.”

Bruce offered that little-boy grin of his.

“You saw through me,” he replied. He carried a rose in his right hand, and there was a bulging bag strapped to his right shoulder.

Vicki opened the door the rest of the way. She always was a sucker for roses. He handed her the flower. She asked him to come in.

She looked at the rose and suddenly remembered another flower—one that was plastic, and purple, and deadly. So much had happened in the last two days, she didn’t quite know how she felt about anything. Like being in a war zone, she thought again. She looked up at Bruce. He smiled nervously.

“So . . .” he began, but he seemed to have no words to follow that with.

Vicki leapt into the silence. It was time for someone to tell the truth.

“Listen, I know we’re supposed to ease into this sort of thing, but I’m really perplexed with you.”

“Yeah,” Bruce replied hesitantly. “I know. That’s why I came. I—”

“You lied to me about leaving town,” Vicki interrupted. She was on a roll now that wouldn’t be stopped. Once she started talking about this, it all had to come out.

“You won’t return my phone calls,” she continued. And how about his behavior the other day? “Then I saw you march through bullets, like you were trying to commit suicide!”

“Look, I—” Bruce was having even more trouble talking than before. “—I did kind of lose it for a while. But some things just”—he looked down at his hands, as if he might find the answer somewhere between his fingers—“affect me.”

“Affect you?” Vicki demanded. “You were a totally different person!”

Bruce looked up at her at last. “You have to understand—” He stopped again, as if he had lost the words. “—crime,” he added at last. He reached his hand out toward her. “I—I love—this city.”

There it was again, the sincerity that had drawn Vicki to him the other night. She still wasn’t going to let him get away with it without an explanation.

“See?” she said. “Now he’s back—the sweet, caring guy. But you seem to be at
least
two people. Bruce, what’s going on?”

He looked away from her, out the window. He bit his lower lip. When he looked back at her, she saw emotions in his face as strong as those he had shown the other day in Gotham Square. There was a new directness in his gaze as well—a determination, she hoped, to set things right.

There was a knock on the door.

Oh great, Vicki thought. The new man in her life finally reaches his great moment of confession, and her apartment becomes Grand Central Station. She smiled at Bruce and shrugged, then walked by him to look through the peephole.

There was a delivery boy on the other side.

“Who’s there?” she called.

“Package for Miss Vale,” the delivery boy replied in a monotone.

What could it be? Something else from Bruce? If so, he should have timed it to arrive a little bit before he did. Oh, well, she thought, better late than never.

She opened the door and signed for the package. It was only after the delivery boy had handed her the box wrapped in brown paper that she realized it was addressed to her in crayon—like the note the Joker had written to her in the museum.

“Bruce?” she called. “I’m frightened.”

Bruce took the parcel from her. Removing his shoulder bag, he marched into the kitchen. Vicki started to follow him, but he shook his head.

“Shut the door,” he instructed. “Just in case.”

Well, maybe he knew best. “Be careful,” she said. “Don’t set it off.”

She shut Bruce and the mystery package in the kitchen.

What kind of scum would send this sort of thing to a defenseless citizen?

He knew the answer already. There was only one madman crazy enough to send a bomb—or something worse—through the mail. He reached into the hidden compartment in the bottom of his pack. He’d need his utility belt for this.

He pulled the belt free and opened the third compartment to the left of the buckle to get at the ultrasound scanner. It was a neat little device, superficially close in appearance to a stethoscope, except there were twin sonar displays where the earpieces should have been. He ran the scanner over the package.

“What do you think?” Vicki called through the door.

There was no response from the scanner.

“Nothing ticking,” he replied.

He pulled a small gas mask from his belt and fitted it over his nose and mouth. Now there was something he needed from the kitchen. He found a steak knife in the dish drainer. He picked up the knife and gently slit through the brown paper.

Vicki knocked on the door. He jumped back, instantly ready, before he realized where the noise was coming from.

“What’s happening?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

He took a deep breath and stepped back to the package, ready to finish his dissection.

That’s when the package burst open.

Vicki heard the loud bang even through the door.

“Bruce?” she yelled even more loudly than before. “Are you all right?”

There was no answer.

“Bruce, I’m coming in!”

She pushed the door open.

Bruce stood in the kitchen, staring at the package. A gloved hand on a spring bounced above the box—a hand holding a bunch of dead flowers.

“Very poetic,” Bruce said.

He reached carefully into the flowers and pulled free a large white card with lettering embossed in purple ink. He handed it to Vicki.

She read it aloud:

“Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

These flowers are dead,

You could be too.”

She looked up at Bruce.

“He sent something,” she said, her voice barely a whisper, “just before he arrived last time.”

Bruce nodded his head toward the front door. Vicki realized he was right. They should get out of here. She turned to leave the kitchen.

That’s when the front door burst open.

It was the Joker, along with his entire gang.

He grinned at Vicki.

“Miss me?”

He pulled up short when he saw Bruce.

“Well, Miss Vale, another rooster in the henhouse?”

He reached into one of his many pockets and pulled out a revolver with a ridiculously long muzzle. He strode over to Bruce, lifting the muzzle to trace the line of Bruce’s cheek.

“Tell me something, my friend,” the Joker purred. “Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?”

Bruce frowned at the Joker. He wasn’t going to try anything, was he? He wouldn’t stand a chance against the entire gang. Not, Vicki realized, that they stood much of a chance anyway.

“What?” Bruce said after a moment.

“I ask that question of all my prey,” the Joker explained, “before I send a draft through their domes.” He chuckled, delighted with his own cleverness. “I just like the sound of it. ”

The rest of the Joker’s gang chuckled along with him.

Vicki glanced over at Bruce. He looked startled for the first time since the Joker had broken in. Vicki followed his gaze.

There was something on the kitchen counter—a high-tech belt of some kind. Vicki had seen a belt like that before. She looked back at the Joker. He was too involved in his own performance to notice anything else.

“Vicki,” he wailed, “don’t let my happy-go-lucky appearance fool you. I’m really very upset. You were dining with me! Talking art! I was a man who was getting somewhere with a beautiful woman. And then—all of a sudden—without a word of apology, you take off with that . . . sideshow phony!”

He took a step toward her, hands clutched over his heart as he spoke in verse:

“I’m only laughing on the outside,

My smile is skin deep.

If you could see inside I’m really crying;

You might join me for a weep.”

He cupped a hand around Vicki’s chin.

Bruce charged toward them.

The fists of one of the gang members got in Bruce’s way. Bruce staggered back, sprawling across the counter before he collapsed in the corner.

The Joker pointed his gun at Bruce.

No! Vicki had to do something.

He pulled the trigger.

A red-and-yellow flag popped out of the gun.

“Bang!” the flag read.

The Joker’s men thought that was really funny. Bruce cowered in the corner. Vicki realized she must have been wrong about the belt.

The Joker took her arm.

“Come on. I want you to shoot some snaps. Make me immortal.” He tugged her toward the door. “It’ll be good for you.”

One of the gang handed Vicki her camera bag and jacket.

Someone screamed outside the window. Vicki looked down to the street below. A police cruiser had run up onto the sidewalk. Two policemen staggered from the car, clutching at their throats. A woman below screamed again and ran away.

Vicki knew the cause of this. She turned back to the Joker.

“What’s wrong with those policemen?”

The Joker considered her question as he, too, glanced out the window.

“Looks like they’re rethinking their spot in the social order.”

A pair of the Joker’s henchmen propelled Vicki from the kitchen. She heard the door slam behind her. She craned her neck around to see what had happened as they hustled her from the apartment.

The Joker hadn’t followed his gang. Instead, he had closed the door. He was in there, alone, with Bruce.

They had all turned away! He quickly scuttled across the floor, stuffing his utility belt back in his shoulder pack.

There were footsteps. He looked up. The Joker’s obscene smile shone down upon him.

“Listen, Bruce,” the Joker said in a confidential tone.
“Never
rub another man’s rhubarb! Get me?”

He aimed his gun at Bruce’s chest and pulled the trigger.

This time, the bullet was real.