Batman 1 - Batman (2 page)

He looked over at Nick.

“Let’s beat it, man. I don’t like it up here.”

Nick laughed. “What are ya, scared of heights?”

“I dunno.” Eddie couldn’t help looking around, even though there was nothing out there except the darkness. “After what happened to Johnny Gobs—”

That made Nick angry. “Look, Johnny Gobs got ripped and walked off a roof, all right? No big loss.”

But Eddie knew it wasn’t that simple. “No, man. That ain’t what I heard at all.” He stopped for a minute, as if he didn’t want to say what came next. But it had to come out.

“I heard the bat got him.”

“The
bat
?” Nick looked away, as if his friend’s idea wasn’t even worth laughing about. “Gimme a break, will you, Eddie?”

But Eddie shook his head. “Five stories, straight down. There was no blood in the body.”

“No shit,” Nick agreed. “It was all over the pavement.” His head whipped around. He stared out into the dark. This time, he had heard the sound.

He looked back at Eddie.

“Shut up!” he barked. “Listen to me. There ain’t no bat.”

All of Eddie was shaking now. “You shouldn’ta turned the gun on that kid, man. You shouldn’ta—”

“You want your cut of this money or don’t you?” Nick was yelling now. “Now, shut up!
Shut up
—”

He stopped when he heard the new sound. It was different this time, and closer, and they both knew what it was—boots crunching on gravel.

They both turned to look. Eddie made a strangled, gurgling sound. Something darker than the night stood on the edge of the roof. It walked toward them. Maybe it was a man. It spread what should have been its arms slowly, majestically. There was movement below those arms, like a shadow of something that wasn’t there, or a great pair of leathery wings. On its chest there was a yellow oval that seemed to glow with a light of its own. And in the middle of that oval was the deep black emblem of a bat.

Nick pulled out his gun and dropped to the gravel. He fired twice at the bat emblem, two clean shots. He was too close to miss. The black figure jerked back as they hit, then fell to the roof with a satisfyingly solid sound.

“I’m gettin’ out of here,” Nick whispered. He turned around to grab the wallet.

Eddie made a low noise, too scared to scream. Nick looked back. The human bat was standing again, and it was coming for them.

The money fell out of Nick’s fingers and fluttered away on the night breeze. He had to get out of this place! Nick kept low, half running, half crawling across the roof. There was someone blocking the way, someone standing in front of the fire escape. A human bat.

No one was going to trap him like this! Nick fired again and again and again, the gun shaking in his hand.

This time, the bullets didn’t do anything at all. The bat walked forward. Eddie was in its path, huddled on the roof, unable to do anything except piss in his pants. The bat walked around him. As the thing passed, a single black boot caught Eddie in the middle of the chest. It lifted him completely off his feet and sent him flying through the air into a brick chimney. Eddie slumped to the roof, out cold.

And the bat didn’t even stop. It just kept on walking.

Nick had to get away. He jumped up, fear moving his legs, and ran past the moving shadow, toward the fire escape and—

The bat moved its hand, as if it was throwing something. Nick was falling forward. He could no longer use his legs. They were pinned together, wrapped in something, rope or wire. Nick screamed. He had to get away. His arms were still free. He pulled his body along the rooftop, the gravel slicing into his elbows, drawing a dozen tiny streams of blood. Nick couldn’t think about the pain. He could think only about the bat.

He dragged himself to the edge of the roof. The bat stayed right behind him, never overtaking him but never far away. There was no place for Nick to go. No place he could escape. There was only the ledge, and the bat.

Nick almost lost it, almost crapped in his pants like that candy-ass Eddie, until he remembered the gun. No one could get him when he had the gun. Both his hands shook as he lifted his piece, so much heavier than it was before. He shot and shot again, but he could no longer open his eyes to aim.

Click.
The hammer hit an empty chamber.

Click. Click. Click.

Something came from inside Nick, a hopeless sound. The sound of somebody who was about to die.

He felt two hands grab his shirt and lift him from the roof.

“Don’t kill me,” Nick whispered. “Don’t kill me.”

Nick opened his eyes. The bat stood on the edge of the roof, and he held Nick out beyond the edge, over nothing.

The bat opened his mouth. His voice was a rasp, like a file biting into steel.

“You’re trespassing, rat-breath.”

Nick looked down—six stories down, at the tiny, tiny cars so far below. He looked up into the bat’s face, but where the thing’s eyes should have been were two mirrors, twin reflections of Nick’s fear.

Nick tried to ignore the pounding in his ears, the feeling of his legs kicking out at nothing but air. What did it matter? He was going to die anyway. He’d tell off the bat before he went.

“Trespassing?” He tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a cough. “You don’t own the night.”

The bat smiled.

“Tell your friends. Tell all your friends.” The smile widened to show teeth. “I am the night.”

Nick screamed as he felt the bat’s grip on him shift. He was spun around and thrown roughly on the tar-and-gravel rooftop. He still managed to look up, to see the bat step off the building’s edge, six stories up, off into nothing but air.

What was going on? Nick couldn’t help himself. He had to see where the bat had gone. He crawled to the ledge and looked over, six stories down.

There was no one there. The bat had disappeared.

That’s when Nick really started to scream.

Welcome to Gotham City, punk.

A new Gotham City.

C
ommissioner Gordon looked out over the crowd. The large hall at the Gotham City Democrats Club was packed. The huge victory banner said it all:

CONGRATULATIONS!
A NEW GOTHAM CITY!
HARVEY DENT—DISTRICT ATTORNEY

At least the banner described Gordon’s dreams. A new Gotham City? Gordon hoped, somehow, that Dent could make a difference. But he had seen others like Dent before him—bright, idealistic, full of fervor to reform that beast they called Gotham City.

Most of the time, the beast got the reformer, not the other way around. There were too many people here, too many ins and outs, too many temptations, too much politics. Gordon’s own hands weren’t as clean as he wished they could be. But he was still here, a survivor, and with luck he could still do some good.

He turned his head to look up and down the head table. It seemed that every reform-minded dignitary in the whole city was here; Brown, Estevez, O’Neil, Cleveland. At least, all the reformers were
supposed
to be here. Gordon noted that the chair two down from the speaker, the one reserved for Bruce Wayne, was vacant. Gordon was a little surprised by that. Wayne had worked as hard as anybody here to get Dent elected.

For all that the newspapers went
on
about “millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne,” he was actually very dependable, very committed. If they could get a few more millionaire playboys with Wayne’s resources working for Gotham, they could turn the city around in no time. Wayne must have had a good reason for staying away. Maybe, Gordon thought as he looked regretfully down at the gray remains on his plate, he couldn’t face up to any more meals of rubber roast beef.

Gordon looked up again, his old politician’s face graced with the hint of a smile. He had learned, through years of public service, to keep as pleasant an expression on his face as possible, no matter what they were having for dinner. Besides, there might be a reason to smile after all.

Dent had won in a landslide over the incumbent, a fellow whom the voters finally realized had been living in the pocket of the mob for the past twenty years. Maybe the vote meant that Gordon and the city had enough people behind them this time to make a difference. Maybe truth and justice would triumph for a change, and some of the real criminals would end up behind bars.

Maybe this, maybe that. Gordon sighed as he glanced to his left. There were few things certain in this world, but one of them was that he would always have to attend these political dinners, and, at every one of them, his honor, the mayor, would make a speech.

Mayor Borg stood, proud as an overstuffed peacock, as if Dent’s election was somehow all his doing. Gordon knew that the mayor was only supposed to introduce Dent, a job that, in Borg’s hands, could take a good twenty minutes.

The crowd quieted as Borg started to speak. Gordon only half listened. Heaven knew, Borg sounded as if he never even listened to himself. The mayor went on about “our fair city” and “this great flower of the east.” He thanked his constituents, most of them, seemingly, by name. Only then did Borg start something that could lead to an introduction. Gordon finally decided to give the mayor his full attention.

Borg took a deep breath, a gesture that should have been dramatic but instead hinted at a life of too many cigarettes. “Across this nation,” he spoke again, “the words ‘Gotham City’ are synonymous with crime. Our streets are overrun, and our police officials have been helpless. As mayor, I promised you that I would root out the source of corruption at the root!” He paused for another breath, raising a pudgy forefinger skyward. “Boss Carl Grissom! Our new district attorney, Harvey Dent, will carry out on that promise. I promise!”

Harvey Dent stood, and the audience was on their feet as well, clapping and cheering. This part of Gotham City really was ready for a change.

Dent motioned for quiet, and a moment later the audience agreed, returning to their seats so that they could hear the new district attorney speak.

Tall and thin, he looked as though he had been born in a business suit. His deep-brown skin gleamed under the lights. Gordon realized that that was another thing to be thankful for. Dent’s leading-man looks would go over well on television—a lot better than a middle-aged, sagging, overweight police commissioner.

Dent started to speak, his voice so clear he hardly needed the microphone. “I’m a man of few words. But those words will count. And so will our actions. I have talked today to Police Commissioner Gordon.”

There was a smattering of applause. For the police commissioner? Gordon smiled politely. My, he thought, the audience was being generous tonight.

“He is targeting businesses,” Dent continued, “suspected of fronting for the syndicate in this city. Within one week, we’ll knock down their doors—” He paused, his eyes sweeping the crowd. “—and shed the light of the law on that nest of vipers!”

There was real applause this time. Gordon wished he could enjoy it more. He had a real job in front of him this time. A job that entailed a lot more than sitting around at fancy dress dinners: Most of the time, as long as you did what you were supposed to, the public managed to ignore the police commissioner. All this attention was making Gordon a little uncomfortable.

Damn! Sometimes he wished he had the freedom to play hooky like Wayne. He could already tell that the rubber roast beef was going to give him gas. He smiled politely at Dent, and hoped his stomach would stay quiet long enough for the new D.A. to outline the rest of their plan—a plan that Gordon hoped, somehow, against all the odds, they could turn into a reality.

What a dump!

Jack Napier absently fiddled with his lucky deck. It was amazing, with all the money Alicia Hunt had—not only from her modeling career, but from all those little presents Boss Grissom always gave her—that she could have filled her apartment up with such crap. What was this livershaped coffee table, anyway, post-Yugoslavian modern or something? Others might call it classy, but to him it was just expensive junk. At least it gave him a place to rest his feet. And the way she covered the walls with her modeling pictures—well, at least it covered the walls.

Jack chuckled at his own private joke. Since she slept with him, she had to have excellent taste in men. Too bad she didn’t have taste in anything else.

Jack finished his one-handed shuffle. He turned his attention back to the television and this stiff who had just gotten himself elected.

Who exactly was this guy? The newswoman had said his name only a minute ago. Bend? Bent? Dent—that was it. Not that there was anything particularly new about him. He spoke like any other politician Jack had ever heard. Jack had to admit, however, that the guy looked classy.

Napier dealt four jacks off the top of the deck, each card with a bullet hole in its center.

“Together we can make this city safe for decent people,” Dent droned on.

“Decent people shouldn’t live here,” Jack said back to the set. “They’d be happier someplace else.”

Alicia glided across the room. She might not have any taste, but she still looked pretty good, especially in that skimpy black negligee. She lifted his feet and rescued a
Vogue
magazine with her picture on the cover. Imagine that, Jack thought. He had been resting his Italian shoes on her face. He noticed with a frown that one of the polished black toes had a slight scuff. He’d have to fix that.