Batman 1 - Batman (5 page)

As an extra special effect, Knox put his fingers behind his head to form two wiggling bat ears. Gordon groaned.

“Knox,” he replied, his voice nowhere near as calm as it should be, “for the ninth time, there is no bat. If there were, we would find him. We would arrest him!”

“Find him. Arrest him,” Knox agreed. “That’s what I always hear. Commissioner, be straight with me—”

Harvey Dent put his hand on Gordon’s shoulder. Vicki had been so intent on the exchange between the commissioner and Allie that she hadn’t even seen him walk up.

“How’s your luck, Jim?”

But before Gordon could answer him, Knox had turned on the fresh prey.

“Mr. Dent. Commissioner Gordon and I were just talking about winged vigilantes. What’s your stand?”

Dent looked directly at the reporter. He wouldn’t get harried like Gordon. His reply was serious and smooth: “Mr. Knox, we have enough real problems in this city without having to worry about ghosts.”

The reply was also meaningless. So Knox’s luck was turning bad as well. Vicki was starting to wonder if they’d have anything at all to show for their night in high society .

That’s when a policeman came in and waved for Gordon to follow him out of the room. Knox looked over at Vicki. She nodded, and they both walked casually in the direction Gordon had left. The night might still have a few surprises after all.

But where had Gordon gone?

Vicki and Allie walked out the first door, to be confronted by three more, each one closed. One led to a closet, another to a set of stairs leading down. By mutual consensus, they chose the door in the middle, which led to a hallway and another half a dozen doors.

It took them only a couple of minutes to realize they were hopelessly lost. Knox finally chose a door at random, opened it, and charged into the room. Vicki followed. There were no people in here. But there were quite a lot of other things.

“And here we are in the arsenal,” Knox quipped. He whistled. “Look at this stuff. Who is this guy?”

It looked as though he had every weapon known to man in this place. Broadswords hung on the wall. Glass cases were filled with everything from blowguns to hand grenades.

The door opened behind them. Allie was too engrossed studying the weapons, but Vicki looked around. It was the good-looking fellow in the tux, champagne glass in his hand. He smiled at her a bit sheepishly. So other people had gotten themselves lost in Wayne Manor too. For some reason, she smiled back.

There was something about this wandering soul, some little-boy-lost quality, perhaps, that Vicki found strangely appealing. She hoped he would stick around. She’d had the feeling, though, from the way he’d reacted the last time they met, that she’d almost scared him away. She’d talk to Allie for a minute, and see if maybe tuxedo would join in.

“Strange,” Vicki said to Knox. “He gives to humanitarian causes, and collects all this.”

“Probably does it to get goils.” Knox’s eyebrows wriggled again.

“I think it’s his enormous—” Vicki paused thoughtfully. “—bankroll they go for.”

Allie laughed ruefully. “Hey, the more they’ve got, the less they’re worth.”

Vicki nodded as she took in the size of this room alone. “This guy must be the most worthless man in America.”

Knox pointed to a long, slightly curved sword in an elaborate silver sheath.

“Where’d this come from?”

“It’s Japanese,” said a voice behind them.

Vicki and Knox both turned. The good-looking guy in the tux had spoken.

“How do you know?” Knox demanded.

The other guy smiled. “Because I got it in Japan.”

But Allie Knox didn’t give up that easily.

“Who are you?”

“Oh,” the tuxedo said. “Bruce Wayne.”

Bruce Wayne? Vicki thought. But he had— But she—

Knox walked quickly across the room, hand extended.

“Allie Knox.” They shook hands.

“I’ve been reading your work,” Bruce said. “I like it.”

“Great,” Knox replied without missing a beat. “Give me a grant.”

Bruce grinned, then looked at Vicki. So introductions were finally here. She put out her hand.

“Vicki Vale.”

They shook. He had a nice, firm handshake.

“Bruce Wayne.”

She looked at him doubtfully. “You sure?”

He replied with that grin again. Vicki realized he could get away with a lot with a smile like that.

“I’ve seen your photographs of Corto Maltese” was what he did say. “You’ve got an extraordinary eye.”

“Some people think she has two,” Allie mentioned as he stepped between them.

Uh-oh, Vicki thought. Male territoriality. Maybe Allie was looking at their date as something more than a convenient reporter’s fiction.

“This is an amazing house,” she said in an attempt to change the subject. “I’d love to shoot it sometime.”

There was a knock at the door. A stiff-backed fellow in a red uniform entered. Vicki’s and Knox’s eyes met again. How many servants did this Bruce Wayne have?

“Mr. Wayne,” began the servant, who must have been some sort of wine steward, “we need to open another five cases of champagne. Will that be all right?”

“Uh—yes, sure,” Bruce said with that same, distracted air Vicki had heard when they had first spoken. “Open six.”

The steward pivoted smartly and left the room. Bruce Wayne blinked, as if he was trying to remember where he was. He turned back to Vicki.

“Yes. Will you be staying in Gotham for a while?”

“I’d like to,” Vicki replied. “I’m intrigued by Allie’s giant-bat story.”

An overdressed couple paused outside the still-open door to the hall. They waved and called good-night to Mr. Wayne, making polite noises about the wonderful party. Bruce nodded politely back, looking for all the world like he didn’t know who they were. His eyes seemed to focus suddenly as he called them both by name. The rich pair waved a final time and departed happily.

Bruce looked back at Vicki.

“Isn’t that a little light after a war in Corto Maltese?”

This time, it took Vicki a second to remember their conversation. Oh, yes. The bat story.

“Light?” she replied with a small, sarcastic edge. “And what do you do for a living?”

There was a discreet cough at the doorway. Vicki looked up to see the butler.

“Sir?” the butler mentioned. “Commissioner Gordon was compelled to leave.”

“Thank you, Alfred,” Bruce said without looking.

“Ahem,” Alfred added somewhat more forcefully. “Sir.
Very
unexpectedly.”

“Oh,” Bruce replied, looking at the butler at last. “Thank you, Alfred.” That slightly sheepish look was back on his face as he turned to Vicki. “I hope you’ll excuse me.”

He looked right into her eyes. She looked right back into his. They both knew this wasn’t the end of something.

“Sure,” she said.

He looked away. Vicki blinked. It was like some sort of line that held them together had suddenly snapped and she was once again free to look other places in the room.

Bruce put his glass down on the edge of a table and started from the room.

“Sir,” Alfred interrupted, “I think perhaps this way.”

Bruce looked at his butler more alertly. “Oh, yes . . . thanks. Oh, Alfred, they need some more wine in the front and someone named Mrs. Daly wanted a copy of the menu.” He started to walk across the room to the far door. “Oh, and Alfred, give Mr. Knox a grant.”

He winked at Knox as he turned and walked rapidly from the room. Alfred picked up Mr. Wayne’s glass and effortlessly caught up with his employer in the far doorway. The butler shut the door behind them.

Knox stared at the closed door. “Nice talkin’ to you, Bruce.” He glanced at Vicki. “Now, are the rich odd? Yes, they are.” He waited for a moment, then added: “Hello? Vicki?”

She realized she was still half looking at the door where Bruce Wayne had disappeared. “Sorry, I was . . .” She tried to gather her thoughts. “He’s comp-lic-ated.” She said at last, slowing the syllables as if the new emphasis would explain it all.

“I said odd,” Knox insisted. Vicki realized there might be a little jealousy there.

“Mmm,” was her answer.

“Ah,” Knox replied, totally dissatisfied. “Well, you’re not the only fan around here. This guy loves himself. There are mirrors in every room.”

Vicki realized Knox was right. There had been huge mirrors on two walls of the grand ballroom. And here were the two of them, standing before another mirror, eight feet wide, that ran from floor to ceiling.

“Bruce Wayne,” Allie added sarcastically. “Maybe it should be Bruce
Vain.”

If you only knew, Mr. Knox. Bruce Wayne took a final moment to watch Vicki and the reporter in the video monitor. The state-of-the-art surveillance camera had silently recorded everything in the armory from behind the oneway glass of the full-length mirror. Of course, it was only one of three dozen monitors, designed to record everything that happened in and around Wayne Manor. And it was one of those other monitors that demanded his attention.

Guests moved backward with exaggerated speed as Wayne rewound the tape. Ah. He punched a button on the console before him. This is what he wanted.

A patrolman talked to Commissioner Gordon on the screen.

“—anonymous tip,” the patrolman was saying. “Napier’s cleaning out Axis Chemical.”

“Good Lord,” Gordon replied, excited and agitated at the same time. “If we could put our hands on him, we’d have Grissom! Why wasn’t I told about this? Who’s in charge of the—”

“Eckhardt, sir.”

Gordon blanched. “Oh, my God—” He reached over and grabbed his coat.

The screen went blank.

Bruce Wayne smiled. This was just what he needed. He stood and walked back out into the cave.

It was time.

J
ack didn’t like this one bit. He hadn’t had to handle this kind of a job in years. Breaking and entering, petty theft—you paid guys to do those things for you, and you expected those guys to take the fall if they got caught.

But Jack still worked for Grissom. For now, he had to do what the Boss told him. He wasn’t ready to make his move in that department—yet.

There was something about this job that made him want to move that much sooner.

The break-in had gone fine so far. His boys had driven up in their unmarked vans and taken out the guards without any trouble at all. They had dismantled the burglar alarms in a matter of seconds, the safe was exactly where Grissom had said it should be, and the guy with the blowtorch would have it open in a minute or less. So why was Jack so uneasy?

Part of that was simple to answer. Even though he had always had a way with chemistry, Jack had never liked fumes. But now, even with his silk handkerchief over his nose and mouth, he could still feel the noxious gases in this place seeping into his lungs. But there was something else wrong here, something that didn’t quite fit. Jack had had that funny feeling ever since he had been in Grissom’s office and turned over a joker instead of a jack.

The safecracker flicked off his torch. He reached out with an asbestos glove and opened the door.

“Empty,” he announced.

Shit! Jack thought. He had known it.

That’s when the alarms went off.

“We’ve been ratted out here, boys!” Jack yelled to his cronies. “Let’s get out of this mess!”

He led the way out of the office, an office two stories above the refinery floor. This whole deal got worse the more he thought about it. They were sitting ducks up here. And Jack had the feeling there’d be enough guns waiting down below for a shooting gallery.

“Freeze!” someone yelled from the floor of the refinery. Jack glanced down. It was a cop, of course. One of a dozen or so cops Jack could see. Just like there were bound to be more cops outside the building and around the vans. Cops who had to have been here even before the alarms went off, cops who had been fed some very special information from very high in the Grissom organization. Jack knew that some of these cops probably had very special instructions, too. He knew all too well how Grissom operated. After all, how many times had Jack personally carried out the Boss’s instructions?

If he didn’t get out of here fast, Jack Napier was a dead man. He had gotten himself caught in a classic setup. When Grissom wanted to get rid of you, he made sure it was done right.

A couple of Jack’s gunmen shot down at the cops. The cops jumped for cover, but a second later they opened up as well, bullets from a dozen guns spraying among the ceiling pipes.

Half the guys ducked back into the office. But that was suicide—there was no other way out from there. The only escape was across the catwalks. Jack yelled for the others to follow him. Then he ran.

Bullets flew past him, embedding themselves in the pipes cluttered all around. Fluids burst forth from dozens of new holes; liquids in every unnatural shade of green and red and purple and brown rained down across the catwalks. Who knew what that stuff was, or what it could do to you? Jack ran through the poisonous downpour, careful not to slip on the wet metal underneath his feet. He would just have to hope that he could wash the chemicals off before they did any permanent damage—