Batman 3 - Batman Forever (13 page)

He wasn’t sure if Bruce had entirely heard him. Instead he was running that night through his mind, trying to reconstruct events. “I remember racing through the fields. Falling into the cave,” and he started ticking off the moments on his fingers, “the bat chasing me . . . those fangs . . . that breath.” Then he paused. “But there was something else. Something I was running from. I just can’t remember.”

The phone rang, and to Bruce it seemed as loud as a cannon barrage. He started slightly as Alfred picked up the phone.

“Wayne Manor.” He listened for a moment, and then turned to Bruce and said, “It’s Commissioner Gordon, sir. There’s been an accident at Wayne Enterprises.”

Suddenly the exercise machine shut down automatically. The device had been monitoring his breathing and respiration, and apparently hadn’t liked what it found. “Routine terminated. Recommend rest. You need a vacation . . . Bruce.”

Bruce and Alfred looked at each other. Clearly it was shaping up to be one of those days.

Edward Nygma leaned against the outside of his cubicle, sobbing profusely onto the shoulder of the head of personnel. She was patting him awkwardly, not quite sure what to make of this display of grief.

“Why? Oh, why?” he moaned inconsolably. “I can’t believe it. Two years. Working in the same office. Shoulder to shoulder, cheek to cheek . . .” Then he stopped crying for just long enough to clarify, “We’re talking face, by the way.” Then he went right back into his histrionics. “. . . and then this.”

“This,” as it happened, was a note (with a few tear stains on it) that Nygma was thrusting into the confused woman’s hands. “I found it in my cubicle. You’ll find handwriting and sentence structure match his exactly . . .” he added in a perfectly rational voice before breaking down once more. “I couldn’t possibly continue here. The memories. I’ll get my things.”

He ducked quickly into his cubicle, where he’d already boxed up his invention. The woman in personnel used the opportunity to slip away, which was fine by Edward. He, likewise, was going to be using the opportunity to slip away.

He heard voices. One of them was Bruce Wayne’s. Another was older, gruff. Sounded extremely . . . coplike. There were a few other knickknacks still scattered around Edward’s cubicle, but nothing important and certainly nothing he couldn’t live without. He took one final glance around, as if to imprint on his mind a final image of what he was leaving behind. That way he could carry it with him mentally as he progressed toward a greater and far more glorious future—a future that would not be realized by being detained for more questioning. He knew he was at a delicate stage right now. He wasn’t absolutely sure that he could contain the buzzing in his brain. He wanted to crow his achievements, boast about his prowess. Perhaps even chatter about Stickley’s gloriously ludicrous expression as his chair had toppled backwards to oblivion.

That would not be good.

Instead, he took the opportunity to bolt out a side door, so that by the time Bruce Wayne and Commissioner Gordon walked past, he was barreling down the steps of the emergency stairway. If covering one’s involvement in a homicide couldn’t be considered an emergency, then what could?

Wayne and Gordon stood in front of the security console, studying the tape from the previous night. Stickley was clearly visible writing a note which they could safely assume was the suicide note that had been turned in to the head of personnel. Upon finishing, Stickley laid the note down carefully. Then he took a chair, gripped it firmly, and . . . using it as a battering ram . . . charged toward the large window at the end of the corridor. He smashed through it, clutching the chair, and vanished from sight.

“That all jibes,” said Gordon. “What we found on the ground . . . well, there wasn’t really enough to tell much of anything. Both your man and the chair, shattered to . . .” He paused. “Sorry, Bruce. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Bruce nodded in acknowledgment.

“In any event, this looks pretty cut-and-dried. Definitely suicide. Thanks for the help, Bruce. We’ll be in touch.”

Bruce shook hands briskly, and then turned away from Gordon.

He walked through the electronics division, stopping to whisper a few words to shaken employees, telling them to take a couple of days if they so desired, with pay of course.

He paused momentarily at Edward Nygma’s cubicle, thinking about the intensity he’d seen in the man’s eyes the other day. Nygma’s ideas might have been a bit odd, but that sort of passion—if properly channeled—could accomplish miracles. That was something Bruce Wayne certainly knew better than anyone else. Perhaps
after
this fiasco was the time to take Nygma aside under less-pressured circumstances. Start again . . .

But the cubicle was almost empty. Nygma’s personal items, and that odd-looking device of his, were gone.

Bruce stared at the vacant cubicle for a time. And then he headed to his office.

Moments later Margaret was following him in, scribbling notes furiously. “Make sure Stickley’s family is taken care of. Full benefits.”

“He wasn’t on our corporate life insurance policy.”

“He is now,” said Bruce, and repeated, “Full benefits.”

She nodded. There was no point in arguing, and besides, she had no intention of trying to act the heavy in this instance. Taking the opportunity to attend to unfinished business, she flipped to a different page in her notebooks and said, “Gossip Gerty and the society columnists have called a record thirty-two times. I think if they don’t know soon who you plan to take to the charity circus, the world is surely going to end.”

Bruce was about to answer when he noticed something on his desk. It was an envelope. “What’s this?”

She was genuinely puzzled. “I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone.”

He flipped it over and scrutinized it. “No postmark. No stamp.” He pulled it open and read off, “ ‘If you look at the numbers upon my face, you won’t find 13 anyplace.’ ”

Margaret wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting inside the envelope, but it certainly hadn’t been that. “Say what?”

He turned the paper over, but there was no signature. He looked back at the message. “It’s a riddle. Numbers upon my face. One through twelve. No thirteen . . .” He shrugged at the obviousness of it. “A clock.”

She scratched her head. “Who would send you riddles?”

He turned to her and said, “Maggie,
that’s
the riddle.”

The run-down tenement building was notable only for its unique decoration. It had once been directly across the street from an outfit called Criss Cross Cleaners, and consequently, a large ad for the dry cleaners consisting of an immense crossword puzzle adorned the exterior. The wall painting was the only reminder that the cleaner had ever been in business there. The paint was peeling and, to make matters worse, graffiti artists had filled in a few of the empty “puzzle spots” with letters that spelled out obscenities.

All of this was irrelevant to at least one of the building’s tenants, a man who had never viewed the place as anything other than a brief rest stop on his determined drive along the superhighway to success.

The problem was that the tenant had always assumed that Bruce Wayne would present him with the opportunity needed to get that final, extra mile. But it was patently clear to Edward Nygma that Bruce Wayne was too self-absorbed, self-important, and self . . . well . . . self-ish, to give a damn about Edward Nygma and his plans.

Indeed, as he worked in his cluttered apartment, putting the finishing touch on his second riddle, he had finally begun to grasp just what had happened. Years ago, when he had looked into the eyes of young Bruce Wayne, he’d seen a peer. But when the adult Bruce Wayne had come face-to-face with Edward Nygma, Wayne had seen only a rival. That was it, of course. It was painfully, even agonizingly, obvious.

“Guess what, Bruce Wayne,” he muttered. “Now I’m the guy with all the answers.”

He turned and looked lovingly at his modified brain scan equipment.

The box.

It sparkled and sputtered slightly, running self-tests and diagnostics. It was almost ready. Almost ready.

He rose and went to the window, resting a hand gently on the Box’s gleaming surface. He looked out over the ugliness of his neighborhood, toward the gleaming spires of the uptown sections of Gotham. And beyond that, up in the hills . . . the residence where Bruce Wayne sat on high, like great Zeus, looking down at the puny mortals and rendering judgments. This person shall be raised up, this other one cast down.

Who gave him the right? Who gave him the goddamn right? Well . . . ultimately, It didn’t matter. Because Edward Nygma was going to take it away from him.

“There are seven million brains in the Naked City. And they’ll all be mine.”

Later that night, cloaked in darkness, Bruce Wayne sat in the depths of the Batcave. He felt as if he were standing on the edge of a diving board, and it would only take the slightest nudge to send him plummeting, headfirst, into . . . what? Bottomless depths? An empty pool?

His entire life was a riddle . . . and was now being further aggravated by some weirdo who had dropped off a riddle in his office.

He was used to weirdness in his life as Batman. But did it have to intrude into his life as Bruce Wayne?

Who had sent him the riddle?

Unbeknownst to Bruce, the answer to that question had slipped a second riddle into the mailbox near the great front gate and was scurrying away as fast as his bicycle would take him . . .

W
hen Alfred did not find Bruce in his bedroom, he felt that same little jump of concern he always felt at such moments. Had Bruce decided to don his caped leisure suit and make an evening of it? Was he lying in an alleyway somewhere, dead or dying? And, as always in such moments when Alfred’s fancy turned to morbidity, he started asking himself what he could have done to prevent it.

All this tumbled through his mind as he descended to the Batcave to check. And there, seated in a high-backed chair, was Bruce Wayne. His fingers were steepled and he was staring off into space.

“Mister Wayne?” Alfred said rather formally.

“Alfred,” replied Wayne.

“Have you been to sleep, sir?”

“On and off. A few minutes here and there.”

Alfred couldn’t think of what to say. Wayne’s voice was so distant . . . and so unspeakably sad. And perhaps it held something else that Alfred couldn’t recall hearing since Bruce was a young boy. Perhaps he sounded just a little bit afraid.

“Can I get you anything, sir?” he asked finally.

“Yes.” Bruce nodded slowly. “You can get me an appointment with Dr. Meridian. I think . . . I could use a sounding board for some . . . things . . . going through my head lately.” He looked up at Alfred. “I hope you aren’t insulted?”

“You mean because, for once, you’ve chosen not to make me the sole beneficiary of your . . . odd confidences?” He smiled ever so slightly. “I shall manage to live with the devastating humiliation.”

By the time he’d gotten upstairs, however, Alfred had brought in the mail . . . and discovered the second riddle. Which meant that, all of a sudden, Bruce Wayne’s reason for going to see Dr. Meridian had changed.

Bruce Wayne drove his gleaming red Jag into the municipal police complex, the guard recognizing him and waving him through immediately. He pulled into a spot, made a mental note of a car parked illegally in a handicap slot, and then made his way upstairs.

Dr. Meridian was a fairly new arrival to Gotham City, and Gordon had rather graciously afforded her office space at the police complex. In return she made herself available several days a week to consult with Gordon and other police officers on various investigations. Her private practice was just starting up but—knowing what a major supporter of the police the Wayne Foundation had always been—she had agreed to make time for him.

Bruce walked briskly down the hallway, needing to ask directions to her office only three times and getting lost only twice. But as he approached the office, he heard grunts and the sounds of combat from within. Quickly he tried the doorknob, but it was locked tight.

He heard Dr. Meridian cry out, and there was the sound of a vicious punch being landed.

He put two and two together, and got . . . Two-Face.

Without hesitation or regard to his secret identity, Bruce Wayne kicked open the door. The lock and knob flew off, clattering to the floor, and the door banged inward. Bruce leapt in, fists cocked . . .

And realized he’d slipped up.

Chase’s hair was a bit matted and hanging down. Her fists were taped up and poised in front of the punching bag that she had been whaling into until Bruce had charged into her office.

Bruce froze where he was, as did she.

The air should have been rife with embarrassment, or shock. Or shouting, “Get out!” or “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” or something.

Instead there was a long moment of tension that didn’t seem to arise from stress but from something else entirely . . .

Act casual,
buzzed a voice in Bruce’s head. He tried to do so, leaning slightly against the doorframe and saying, “I guess I’m early. I have an appointment. I’m Bruce Wayne.”