Batman 1 - Batman (22 page)

The door to the cathedral wouldn’t open. It was bolted from the inside.

Gordon ordered his men to beat it down.

You couldn’t keep a good crimefighter down.

It had surprised the Joker for a moment to see that costumed nut up and stumbling. But, once you had survived a dunking in toxic waste, nothing surprised you for long. Maybe the two of them would have their showdown after all. They would, that is, if the Joker couldn’t get out of here fast enough.

But he had a date with a helicopter in another five minutes, and a whole slew of stairs to climb.

He heard Batman, grunting far below him. On the steps above him, Vicki was panting. The Joker himself wasn’t breathing hard at all.

He couldn’t run. There was a man with a gun.

There was more wrong with him than a few broken ribs. As the adrenaline drained from his body, he could feel where he had wrenched his right knee. He had to be careful to stand on it just the right way or his leg would give out on him. He must have torn something in his left hand as well. When he tried to straighten the last two fingers, he wanted to scream.

There was a man with a gun. He knew the man’s smile.

He wanted to scream, but he didn’t. He wouldn’t give the Joker the pleasure of knowing his problems or his location.

He knew the man’s smile.

The broken ribs dug into his side when he lifted his right leg. But he couldn’t stop. The Joker was up there, somewhere, waiting for him. The Joker and Vicki.

There was a trapdoor overhead. The top of the stairs—and his ticket out of here! It just proved that if you kept a sunny attitude, any job would go right.

He reached past Vicki and pushed open the trapdoor. There!

“Upsy-daisy,” he said to Vicki as he gave her a final shove up into the belfry.

As the Joker followed her up, someone said, “Hiya boss.”

Three men were waiting for them—the three bozos he had hired from that Kung Fu studio. He had never learned their names, so that’s how he thought of them—as Bozo One, Bozo Two and Bozo Three.

“What brings you here?” the Joker asked the bozos. “Getting religion?”

Bozo One, a lithe, medium-size man who wore trick boots, said, “I was getting confused down there.”

“We come up to get a bird’s eye view of what was goin’ down,” said Bozo Two, a slightly larger, heavier man.

Bozo Three, a huge black man whose face was covered with tribal scars, said nothing. The Joker thought of Bozo Three as the most dangerous of the lot.

“Well, well, how cozy, all of us together,” the Joker said. “We have time for a little exploration.”

He blinked to adjust his vision to the pale moonglow which was the only source of light and examined his surroundings. He was in a small room surrounded by four wooden slat-filled windows, designed to let the sound get out while keeping the rain away. There was also a pair of doors that led out to a walkway and the roof beyond—the perfect thing for a helicopter rescue. A good-sized bell was set in a rocker in the middle of the room and there were two smaller rockers to either side of that bell. Both were empty. Where were the bells?

The Joker almost stumbled over them as he turned around. They were
that
close to the trapdoor.

How convenient! Two bells so close to the edge—so close to a little accident!

The Joker giggled. You ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?

These bells were heavy suckers! He loosened one from its mount, with his acid squirting flower. The heavy iron rolled down quickly, smashing through the rotten wood as it went.

The Joker roared. This was even better than bowling!

Gordon barely got his men out of there in time.

The noise had been horrendous. The bell had come tumbling down the stairs, crashing and banging against wooden planks and stone walls, tearing away steps and mortar as it went. As it gained momentum, it crashed through a rotten section of the steps, ripping away a whole six-foot section.

By the time the bell had smashed on the stone floor at the base of the tower, it had done its damage. Maybe they could have gotten past that six-foot gap in the stairway, and two other, similar gaps Gordon could see higher up in the tower. But the rest of the staircase was no longer solid, either. Whole sections leaned crazily toward one wall or the other, and there were dozens of new holes and missing planks.

This stairway would never be used again. Batman and the Joker had the battle to themselves after all.

That was, Gordon thought, if both of them were still alive.

Thomas. Thomas. Thomas.

He heard his heart beat heavily in his chest. He’d barely dodged the bell.

Thomas. Someone following. Can’t run. Man with a gun.

He was almost at the top of the stairs. If only he could ignore the pain. He closed his eyes.

Can’t run. Man with a gun.

He forced his eyes opened and took the stairs, one, then another, and another. He rested for a moment on a window ledge. The stairs ended ahead at a closed trapdoor. Not far to go.

Man with a gun.
He knew that smile.

Somehow, he was back on the stairs. Somehow, he reached the trapdoor. He pushed against it. It was stuck. He tried again, but he had no strength.

His eyes closed again.

He knew that smile. You ever danced with the devil
—

“—by the pale moonlight?”

The Joker always found comfort in those words. Besides, he owed it to himself to say his little piece aloud. He had to have killed
somebody
with that bell.

He thought he heard a noise under the trapdoor.

He couldn’t help himself. Blame it on a Joker’s curiosity.

He pulled the second, heavy bell off the edge of the door and opened the trap.

There was nobody down there.

All right! Way to go!

“I must have belled the bat!” he yelled aloud with a laugh.

He was glad Vicki was there to share his triumph. Surely now she would appreciate him.

He looked toward the rafters. It was dark up there—the kind of place that never saw the light of day.

“There ain’t any more of you up here, are there? Daddy or mommy bats?”

He turned to Vicki. “That was a joke. Why aren’t you laughing?” He jabbed his gun barrel into her jaw and she winced in pain. “You’re going to have to learn to laugh at my jokes!”

Light stabbed through the slats of the windows. Someone on the street had turned on spotlights. That was okay with the Joker. It would help his helicopter pilot.

“Boss,” Bozo Two said, pointing to the trapdoor. “I think I heard something moving down there.”

“Goody goody,” the Joker giggled. “Our fun isn’t over yet. We can play hide and seek. And whoever comes through the trapdoor is it.”

On the third try, Batman managed to push open the trapdoor. Ignoring the agony throbbing through his body, he heaved himself up and into the belfry. He paused. He could see the glare of spotlights shining around the edges of slats in four small windows and, the shapes of two large bells and, coming from below, he heard sirens and voices. Gordon would be assembling his forces, searching for an avenue of attack. But, by the time he found one, whatever was going to happen would be finished.

Where was the Joker? Vicki? Batman looked away from the light to allow his vision to adjust to darkness.

Then he heard it—the mocking, insane voice: “It seems I have a bat in my belfry.”

Almost immediately, there was another sound, a shriek, and from the gloom he sensed, rather than saw, something was hurling toward him. It was a man, cartwheeling across the floor. A beam of light gleamed briefly on two silvery blades jutting from the man’s boots. Batman had no time to think, nor did he need any. For years, he had trained himself for moments like this—had trained himself simply to react.

The man reached the apex of his final somersault a foot above Batman’s head and the blades arced toward Batman’s face. Batman moved under the man’s legs and his fist traveled in a straight, swift line from his hip to the man’s crotch. As Batman stepped aside, the man howled, dropped to the floor clutching himself, and lay still.

So the Joker wasn’t alone. How many others were there?

From the corner of his eye, he saw something move between the searchlights and the slatted windows. Someone was outside, on the roof. Through an open door, he saw the Joker with his arm locked onto Vicki’s throat and a gun pressed to Vicki’s temple. He stepped back, debating whether to rush the door or attempt to get behind his quarry.

He heard a rustle from the rafters ten feet over his head and, again without thinking, flung himself to the side. The bulk of a man dropped past him, the sleeve of the man’s outstretched arm brushing Batman’s cape. The attack became a plunge as the man continued to drop—through the open trap door and on down the stairwell. There was a thud, and a stifled moan, a moment’s silence and then a final, echoing gong as the body hit the bell far below.

He started toward the open door.

Something blocked his way. A huge, hulking silhouette of a man. It stepped into the light from the window and Batman saw the face, a hideously scarred caricature of a human countenance. The scarred man was swinging a rope with a heavy steel pulley tied to one end—a weapon no less lethal for being improvised.

The scarred man swung the rope. As Batman ducked, the pulley passed within an inch of his cowl and, pain lanced his side making his gasp and, for a fraction of a second, lose consciousness. He backed away a step, two. A grin widened the scarred man’s lips.

Batman backed off a third step and paused. His timing would have to be perfect; he might not get a second chance. The rope and pulley lashed out like a whip. Instead of ducking or dancing backward, Batman took a single stride forward, inside the arc of the rope, and drove the rigid fingers of his left hand into the nerve center of the scarred man’s solar plexus. It was a strike that would instantly paralyze most human beings. The scarred man grunted, straightened, and his grin grew broader.

Outside, on the roof, the Joker hummed a Strauss melody as he waltzed with Vicki.

“I’d say we were made for each other—Beauty and the beast,” he said. “Mind you, if anyone else ever calls you the beast, I’ll rip their lungs out.”

He laughed.

Behind the Joker, through the open doors, Vicki saw the shadowy forms of Batman and the monster the Joker called Bozo Three. She knew Bruce—Batman—had to be injured, and probably exhausted. Could he possibly win? She thought she knew the answer, and for the first time, she felt a cold lump of despair growing within her.

Batman circled his opponent. His breath came in short gasps, and each gasp brought new pain. He had given the scarred man his best shot and it had accomplished nothing. How long could he continue before his legs would no longer support him? No more than a minute, surely. He scanned the belfry, searching for a weapon, but there was only the bell.

The bell!

Batman crouched, and sprang. His jump carried him to the top of the bell. For a second, he teetered, finding his balance. Then, as the scarred man began to whirl the pulley over his head, Batman leapt.

The scarred man scuttled aside.

Batman continued downward, past the scarred man and into the open trapdoor. Continued falling.

Vicki saw Batman vanish below the floor of the belfry. The lump of despair filled her whole being. But only for a second. She was alone? All right. If this had to be her fight, she accepted it.

She looked down at the street and the searchlights. This was her weapon—the fact that they were eight hundred feet above the pavement. The height and her courage, and her wits—these would be enough.

She gritted her teeth. And smiled up at the Joker.

“You dance divinely,” she purred.

The scarred man peered down the stairwell. He hadn’t heard the caped fool land. It was so dark, impossible to see—

Two legs shot from the stairwell and clamped around the scarred man’s head.

Batman had grabbed part of a broken rafter just under the trapdoor and hung there until the bulk of his enemy appeared in the opening, as he knew it would. Then he bent his body in an upward “V” and slammed his legs to either side of the scarred man’s head. The pain was beyond anything he had ever imagined, but although he felt it, he somehow no longer cared about it.

He levered his legs past the lip of the trapdoor and rammed the scarred man’s skull into the bell. Once. Twice. Again and again. The scarred man relaxed, went limp. His body slid into the opening and as Batman released it, plummeted into the stairwell.

Vicki pressed herself against the Joker.

“You say such beautiful things,” she murmured.

Just keep him moving back, she told herself. Keep him moving toward the edge of the parapet.

She rubbed her cheek against his. “You’re so strong . . . and I love purple—”

The Joker stopped, and his face stiffened.

Behind Vicki, someone said, “Pardon me. Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?”

A gloved fist smashed into the Joker’s jaw, knocking him away from Vicki, sending him into a sprawl through the doors and into the belfry. Batman brushed Vicki aside and followed the Joker. As the Joker was rising, Batman pivoted and kicked him into the bell.