The Further Adventures of The Joker (20 page)

“There is nothing wrong with your television set,” the Joker’s solemn voice intoned. As the Joker slipped into the familiar opening monologue to
The Outer Limits,
Bruce Wayne sipped tea in the warmth of the fireplace that had been transported, stone by stone, from a Zurich chalet, and watched the big-screen television. A VCR quietly toiled on a shelf, its record light angry and red.

The scrambled TV picture blipped and the Joker’s lean figure appeared, seated at a pepper-green desk before a jet-black background. He held up a grainy blowup of Bruce Wayne’s made-up face, obviously copied off a videotape.

“Have you seen this man?” the Joker asked seriously. “No?” He tore the photo in half and tossed it over his shoulder. “I’m not surprised. He’s not Batman, any more than I am.”

Bruce Wayne sat up tensely.

“Nice try, Bats. But next time get a better makeup artist. I recommend Dick Smith.”

“I’m sorry, Master Bruce,” Alfred called from the next room.

“It couldn’t be helped, Alfred,” Wayne said unhappily. His jaw muscles were hardening with tension.

The Joker reached out of camera range and brought forth a gleaming plastic skull. He held it up beside his face, as if for comparison purposes.

“Have you seen this man?” he asked. “This is the true face of Batman, after
all
the masks have been peeled away.”

Behind him, the black background lit up. It was a mosaic of countless X-ray negatives, shot from every angle. Bruce Wayne recognized the subject. It was his own head, taken as he was in the act of removing his cowl. The X rays showed his skull from every conceivable angle—sides, back, and top.

“You are looking at the skull of the Batman,” the Joker went on, “painstakingly recreated from the slides you see behind me.”

The Joker set the skull down and brought a wet cone pyramid of grayish clay impaled by a shaping tool into camera range. He used the tool to slap a dab of clay on the skull’s cheek.

“Those of you of the
forensic
persuasion may have an inkling of what I’m doing,” the Joker said, as he smoothed the clay onto the plastic bone with a white thumb. “Every skull is unique. Ask your neighborhood anthropologist. If you can find him. The one who constructed this little number for me, I fear,
expired
from overwork. Then you build up the features with clay, and presto—you have a recreation of the poor deceased’s face.”

Another blob of clay landed on the forehead. The Joker used his thumbs to smooth it into a smear. As he talked, the skull-white face slowly acquired a slick gray skin.

“You thought the joke was on the Joker,
didn’t
you—Batman?” he mocked. “But the joke is on you. I have your skull. And soon I will have your face. And you can’t stop me. As for the rest of you, tune in tomorrow night for the
real
unmasking of the Batman. I now return control of your television set to you—until
next
time. Toodles.”

The screen went blank. The local newscasters came on, shuffling hastily prepared copy and trying not to stumble over their words. Bruce Wayne hit the remote off-switch.

“Can he really do it, Master Bruce?” Alfred asked timorously.

“I don’t honestly know, Alfred,” Bruce Wayne said distantly. “But the Joker is right about one thing—every skull
is
unique. And the technique he’s using has put a face on more than one skeletal murder victim.”

Commissioner James Gordon rubbed his tired eyes in the dark-wood sanctity of his office. He had just heard the bad news—the body of noted anthropologist Richard Parris had been discovered in Old Gotham Cemetery. The good news was he still had his face.

“Perhaps
these
will relieve your eyestrain.” a cool voice said from the shadows.

Gordon started. He blinked at the long batlike silhouette standing framed by the window. A gauntleted hand opened to display Gordon’s folded eyeglasses.

“How did you get in here?” Gordon demanded. “I posted men at the door.”

Batman approached, his cloak rippling in a sudden draft. Gordon noted the open window behind him.

“My God, we’re twelve stories up!” he blurted.

“But only three down.” Batman’s smile was tight and grim. “From the roof.”

Gordon accepted the glasses and put them on.

“I looked for you when I left the factory,” Batman said casually. “Thought you might appreciate a ride.”

“I flagged down a black-and-white unit. Didn’t tell them what had happened. Not for me, you understand. But the panic that would ensue if my abduction got out would—”

“I understand.”

“Where were you?”

“Out of the country. I came as soon as I heard.”

The tension in Gordon’s face visibly lessened. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Steal back my skull,” Batman said evenly. “But I’ll need your help.”

“What can I do?”

“I checked the card factory on my way over. Deserted. It’s not the broadcast studio. But if I find it, I’ve got him.”

“Do you think he can pull it off?”

“You know how reliable Facial Imaging Reconstructive Morphology is. He’ll come close. Too close. I want to see videotapes of the first transmissions.”

“No, you don’t,” Gordon said quickly. Then, relenting, “We have them upstairs. Come on.”

Waving the surprised police guards aside, Commissioner Gordon led Batman to a conference room where a television and video hookup occupied a corner shelf.

Gordon loaded the first tape, saying, “We’ve been over these. There are no sound clues or signal signatures, no leads.”

“We’ll see,” Batman said. He watched both tapes in silence, without flinching. Only the stress of the black fabric over his gauntlet knuckles signified the ordeal he stoically endured.

“You can’t blame yourself,” Gordon said, noticing the telltale tightening of fabric.

“I don’t,” Batman clipped. “I blame the Joker. Let’s go through them again,” he added, cupping his chin in one hand.

Gordon shuddered. “I’m not sure I’m up for another rerun.”

“Just one scene, Jim,” Batman said, reinserting the first cassette. “Look at this.” Batman fast-forwarded to the spot where Punkin Head and Jack-O’-Lantern first appeared on the Bittner murder tape, and let it run.

“Which is which, you wonder?” the Joker was saying. “Dear me, I can hardly tell myself. They’re twins, you know.”

Batman turned to Gordon. “What do you think?”

“A joke?”

“Know any career criminal twin brothers?”

Gordon snapped his fingers. “The Melopopone twins! Carlo and Remo.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Small-timers. Punks. Losers. And not very bright.”

“Exactly the kind the Joker likes to surround himself with,” Batman pointed out. “No self-respecting criminals would wear pumpkins over their heads. Any known associates? Or a recent address?”

“Let’s find out.”

Moments later, the sullen, unintelligent faces of the Melopopone twins stared up at Batman from a thick mug book.

Commissioner Gordon read from a file. “They live in Crime Alley. Or did.” He looked up. “That’s where the second body turned up.”

“I’ll be in touch,” Batman said, exchanging the mug book for their address. He slipped out the window. Gordon shut it behind him, feeling as if a crushing weight had lifted from his shoulders.

The Gotham skyline was turning pink when the Melopopone twins’ flashy convertible finally pulled up to their Basin Street tenement, just off the notorious Crime Alley section of town. Their complaining voices rose as they stumped up the delapidated stoop. It reached the hooded ears of Batman, up on the roof. He went over the parapet to an open third-floor window he’d jimmied hours before.

“Thought this night would never end,” Carlo was saying as they clumped up the hall stairs.

“Did you see the way he was flinging clay on that thing?” Remo shot back. “Like a crazy guy.”

“He
is
a crazy guy, stoopid.”

“Oh, right.”

Carlo unlocked the apartment door and pushed. “It’s stuck,” he complained. Remo pushed him aside and hit the door with his shoulder. Momentum carried him in. A crunching black boot to his flat face propelled him out again.

Carlo watched stupefied as his brother tumbled down the winding steps like a human accordion. He looked back at the apartment door.

A terrible black and gray figure stood in the doorway. It lifted batlike wings and advanced on him.

“He’s in the Stigman Building,” Carlo blurted out.

Batman stopped. “What?”

“The Stigman Building. That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s where he broadcasts from. Top floor. Company name is Wildcard Video.”

The frightening cloak lowered slowly, almost disappointedly.

“What else can you tell me?” Batman hissed.

“That’s all of it. Honest.”

“Thanks,” Batman said, driving a right hook into Carlo’s undershot jaw. Carlo went down the stairs to land on top of his insensate brother. Batman stepped over the pile of human wreckage on his way to the waiting Batmobile.

The Batmobile careened through the early morning light. Batman hated to prowl by daylight, even this early, before most decent citizens were up. Night was his wine. But it was a race against time. In his mind’s eye, he could see the Joker hunched over that mocking plastic skull—his skull—maniacally applying clay and molding features up from the bone, recreating the well-known face of millionaire Bruce Wayne.

The Joker worried the corner of his red lips with a pink tongue. He squinted one eye as he carefully held the clay-covered skull up to the flourescent light.

“Too much jaw,” he decided, and pulled a pinch from the point of the chin. He smoothed the indentation, nodded and added a tiny cleft with a wooden tool.

“Perfect! I don’t know who you belong to,” he said, addressing the mute skull, “but tonight I make you a star. Remember, I get ten percent of the rest of your life.”

He returned the skull to a pottery wheel, sprinkled it with water to keep the clay malleable, and covered it with plastic. Carefully, he placed the skull in a white cardboard hatbox, sealing the lid with Scotch tape.

“I’ll fire you after the show,” he muttered. “Can’t risk that million-dollar face cracking in the kiln.”

Clutching the box, the Joker rose up. Just as quickly, he sat down again. His eye had caught sight of the Emmett Kelly clown plaque by the door. Its red nose glowed like a radioactive cherry.

“Uh-oh, company,” he said. “Now who would come calling at
this
hour?” He set the box before him and reached under the table with one hand. It came up holding a black plastic Uzi. He shook it. It sloshed reassuringly. His grin stretched taut like a rubber band.

The Joker fixed his beady eyes on the bank of windows that lined the north wall and waited. He was surprised when he heard footsteps behind him.

The Joker spun around, coming to his feet.

“Clever. Very clever,” he told the batlike figure in the now-open doorway. It stood like a bat at rest, its capelike wings drooping as if in sorrow. “I expected you to come in through the window,” he added.

The figure said nothing. It simply stood there, the head an indistinguishable blur.

“And I heard you coming a mile away. You’re slipping, Bats.”

The figure stood resolute. “I suppose you want this,” the Joker said, hefting the hatbox high. The other hand kept the plastic Uzi trained on the figure. He tried to sight on the bat symbol, but it was lost in the shadow of the enfolding cloak.

“Well, don’t just hang there, say something banal.” Silence. “No? Then show me some
bone!”
The Joker squeezed the trigger and a jet of yellow liquid squirted the length of the room. It struck the figure of Batman square in the chest, sending up hissing billows as the acid ate away at the cloak fabric.

The Joker squinted through the stinky vapor, looking for the welcome expression of pain under the cowl. Through the rags of smoke, he saw the cloak shrivel like burning paper . . . revealing an old-fashioned wooden coatrack. His eyes went wide.

Then he screamed.

The crash of glass came from the north wall. The Joker whirled. Too late. Flying boot soles propelled him the length of the room. The Uzi went flying. But the Clown Prince of Crime held onto his precious box. On his stomach, he crawled for the acid pistol. He reached out. A black boot stamped on it.

The Joker scuttled back. He came up on his feet, laughing softly, warily, his eyes darting crazily, as if inflicted by nystagmus.

“I guess you
know
what’s in the box?” he taunted.

“I know what’s in the box,” Batman said. His face under the cowl was grim. He wore no cloak.

“Trade you?” the Joker suggested. “The box for your cowl?”

“No deal,” said Batman, striding toward him.

“Just as well. I won’t be satisfied until I unmask you right down to the bone. That’s where the truth really lies, you know. In the bone. It’s the
ultimate
nitty-gritty.”

The Joker backed into the wall. The Emmett Kelly plaque was directly behind him. When he felt the nose against his spine, he leaned back. He heard a welcome click. A ladder-equipped trapdoor dropped from the ceiling. The Joker slid up it like an eel.