Batman 1 - Batman (17 page)

B
atman 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.

Vicki just hoped it wasn’t too Sate for Bruce.

Bruce woke suddenly.

He had fallen asleep on the map of Gotham City. He had been staring at it, hoping somehow that the maze of streets and buildings would somehow open up to show him the Joker. He looked up. Thirty video monitors looked back at him, showing thirty empty rooms. There was the slightest of noises behind him. He quickly glanced back. Alfred was quietly folding the cape of his uniform.

That meant the butler must have brought what he asked for.

“The file on my parents?” Bruce managed.

Alfred solemnly nodded toward a manila folder on the corner of the desk. Even half asleep, Bruce noticed the butler was unusually quiet.

“What’s on your mind, Alfred?”

“I’m getting old, sir,” the butler replied. “And I don’t want to fill my days grieving for old friends. Or their sons.”

Bruce conceded that Alfred had a point. But it was far too late to change his course of action now. It had probably been far too late on the day his parents died. There was only one thing he could do—one real reason that the Batman had come into existence—and the Batman had to fulfill his destiny.

Bruce asked Alfred if he might have some coffee. He opened the file.

They had the press conference on the steps of Gotham City Hall. That in itself was significant. Yesterday, Commissioner Gordon knew, Mayor Borg would have led any press conference from the newly built reviewing stand across the street in Gotham Square. The mayor wanted that stand, and the celebration surrounding it, to begin a renewal of all that was good about their city.

But the Joker had changed all that. His murderous actions had instead turned the reviewing stand into a symbol for crime and anarchy—all the things that were wrong with Gotham. And, in a way, even though the Batman frightened him off, the Joker could claim a victory.

Tomorrow, the city would tear that podium down.

Borg cleared his throat and spoke into the dozen microphones on the stand before him.

“The two hundredth anniversary birthday gala has been indefinitely postponed.”

That’s all the mayor could bring himself to say. He stepped aside and let Harvey Dent—the new voice of Gotham City—take center stage. Commissioner Gordon never thought he would see the day when Mayor Borg could not talk forever about whatever glory or tragedy had affected Gotham. But this renewal of the city had been the mayor’s personal fantasy, something he could leave behind for posterity and the history books. Failure here pointed to the failure of his whole political career. For the first time since he had shared political office with Borg, Gordon realized, he actually felt sorry for the mayor.

Dent looked straight into the central television camera and began to speak.

“We’re vehemently opposed to terrorism in any form. But a toxin has been found in the coffee at the police stations. With two thirds of our police force disabled, we simply can’t guarantee public safety—”

Dent hesitated. Somebody had ran out of one of the mobile video trucks and was yelling at the cameramen. Gordon glanced over at the mayor. Borg started to whimper. The commissioner ran down the steps to see what the problem was. He joined a group of technicians clustered around a monitor.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

“See for yourself,” a thin, balding fellow replied. “This monitor shows the feed going out to the local stations. But only one half of that picture is ours.”

Gordon looked at the monitor for himself. The screen was split down the middle, with the left half showing the scene at City Hall. The right half was blank, showing nothing but video snow. But then a picture formed in the snow, and solidified to show the figure of a man sitting in an armchair in a drawing room.

Gordon recognized the figure in the chair only when the picture came into focus. It was the Joker.

“Joker here.”

The Joker smiled convivially. Rather than a bizarre combination of dead white and flaming red, his face was a neutral flesh color. It almost made him look human.

“Now,” he continued, his tone slightly chiding, “you guys have said some pretty mean things. Some of which, I admit, were true under that fiend, Boss Grissom. He was a terrorist and a thief. But, on the other hand, he was great at bridge. Anyway, he’s dead, and he left
me
in charge.”

The Joker paused and leaned toward the camera. “Now, I
can
be theatrical, maybe even a little rough. But there’s one thing I’m not. I’m
not
a killer. I’m an artist.”

He leaned even closer, so that his grin filled the screen.

“And I
looooove
a party! So, trace, guys!” The camera retreated as he spread his arms wide.
“Commence au Festival!”

His announcement was greeted by applause. Canned applause.

“I even got a little present for Gotham City!” the Joker continued, his voice rising with the excitement. “At midnight I drop twenty million dollars cash on the crowd!”

He waved his hands again, this time as a gesture of humility.

“I’ve got plenty,” he added, “so don’t worry about me.

The mayor had taken the microphone back on his side of the screen.

“We are not prepared to discuss any deals—” he began.

“You heard me, folks!” the Joker interrupted. “Twenty million dollars!”