The Further Adventures of The Joker (46 page)

Leslie was a bloody heap on the floor.

Jason’s body lying broken and cold
. . .

Batman crawled to her, tore off his glove, pressed his fingers beneath her left ear. Ignore the warm blood that slicks her neck. Find it. Find it.

It was there. The slight throb beneath the skin was faint. But it was there.

She was bleeding to death. From the look of it, she must have been standing by the window when the recovery room blew, and was thrown over her desk. God only knew how much glass had flown into her body. Some broken bones . . .

He tore his cape off at the neck and threw it over her Then he reached beneath her, trying to be gentle, and lifted.

He stormed out the clinic through a cloud of black smoke that poured from the door, holding tightly to his charge. Past the curb he fell to his knees, cradling her in his arms while the fire behind him raged on, consuming the remains of children who’d never had a chance.

People were gathering. He looked up at their faces, numb. “Help her,” he pleaded. Then he froze.

Voices in the crowd became suddenly distant. Someone shouted to him something about having called an ambulance, but he scarcely heard it. Others moved in to help with Leslie, but he wasn’t even conscious of his own movements as they helped him to his feet and guided him further from the fire. All he could see was the face staring at him from across the street.

Chalk-white and grinning, clad in purple from head to toe, the figure tipped his hat to him, revealing a wild mane of green hair before strolling off into the night.

And as Batman watched helplessly, feeling Leslie’s blood flow down his arms, a growl began inside him that quickly rose into a feral scream.

“Jokerrrrrrrrrr!”

When Mommy came into his room the next day and asked him what had happened to Mr. Giggles, all he would do was shrug and say that it fell. Privately he was still shaking, feeling wounded, though it was a wound far deeper than any physical abuse his father might have inflicted, or desired to inflict. For that night Daddy had revealed himself, as if the funny and gentle man he’d known all his young life had been a lie, only to be supplanted by this nervous and hurtful thing that had apparently always lurked just beneath the surface. The sound of laughter in their house was gone.

Some nights later, the last fight erupted, and the worst The screaming awakened him, the angry yelling back and forth, until he heard the sound of glass breaking and something heavy hitting the floor. Then silence, for what seemed like forever, and then his father raced into his room, turned on the light and, thinking him still asleep, began shaking him awake
.

“Sport, wake up. C’mon, get dressed. We have to take Mommy to the hospital.”

He sat up very suddenly. “She havin’ the baby?”

His father didn’t reply, just dug some clean clothes out of the dresser and tossed them onto the bed. “Put these on. I’ll warm up the car.”

The rest of the night felt more like a dream. His mother looked sick. Her face was white and clammy, and she spoke not a word as they drove to the hospital, though twice he remembered hearing a soft moan escape her lips, and suddenly he felt very afraid.

The emergency room lobby was crowded. Several people wore blood-soaked bandages on different parts of their bodies. A thin woman in the corner kept rubbing her arm and shivering, and a little boy a short distance away was curled up tightly in his chair, while his worried mother pressed a damp cloth to his forehead.

Nearly an hour went by before a doctor came out to talk to his mother. They wheeled out a table and lifted her onto it. His father could only stare after her as she disappeared into the examination room, then he buried his face into his hands, shaking.

Two hours later, the doctor came back out and took his father aside to talk to him. Daddy listened, whispered “Oh, God” once, and slowly turned to his frightened son as the doctor walked away.

“C’mon, pal. Mommy’s gonna sleep here tonight.”

“What about the baby?”

“She’s not gonna have the baby anymore. Let’s go home.”

“No! I wanna be with Mommy!”

“Please, sport. We can’t. She needs to rest now. We’ll come get her tomorrow, I promise.”

He started crying. “No, I wanna see Mommy
. . .
”

His father grabbed him and picked him up, holding him tightly to his chest as they rushed out of the lobby, the boy sobbing all the way home.

But true to his father’s word, the next day they went back to the hospital and brought Mommy home, and though her skin was no longer clammy, she looked worse than she had the night before, and she cried almost constantly for several days, hardly speaking, staying in her bed the whole time. Only when he came to sit with her, sketching idly away at her bedside did she begin to feel a little better, smiling as she watched him. Eventually she started talking more, and after a week or so, she got up to get on with her life. But though his parents no longer fought or argued as they had, and in time Mommy became less despondent, she never again took any genuine joy in anything.

And one thing was becoming clear to him, and starting to occupy his mind, both day and night. Daddy had killed the baby.

Gordon cursed when he saw the remains of the clinic, a gutted ruin that left him with a sickening feeling of déjà vu. He found Bullock sorting out the mess with Merkel by the front steps. The pavement still glistened where water hadn’t puddled, though the firefighters had long gone. A uniform was stretching yellow tape that read POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS in front of the entrance.

“Fifteen dead,” Bullock told him. “All kids. Incendiary, just like Grandvue.”

Gordon sucked on his pipe. “Report said there were only twelve kids in the building.”

“Three more bodies were found in an alley down the street. One of them was Sammy Levant. They were all grinning.”

Gordon looked at him sharply. “Shit. What about the doctor?”

“She’s in emergency at Saint Matthew’s,” Merkel said. “She’s in pretty bad shape.”

“Is Batman still around?”

Bullock waved down a dark street with his cigar. “That way. By his car.”

“All right, keep me posted.” Gordon headed down the street, his eyes taking a moment to adjust to the change in light, but he soon spotted the Batmobile’s unique silhouette.

“Nothing about it pointed to him, Jim,” creaked Batman’s voice. He sounded terrible. At first Gordon didn’t spot him, then realized one of the doors was open, and that he was sitting on the driver’s side. “No clues, no boasts, no calling cards. He struck anonymously, and I never once suspected. Now he’s finished what he set out to do, and he can afford to rub my face in it. He’s been manipulating me from the start.”

“How so?”

“Don’t you see? He’s never worked outside his M.O. before. Always he’s left a trail I could follow if I looked hard enough. It was a sick game to him. But this whole business was aimed at me, every aspect of it intended to manipulate me toward
this.
He even set the Darkangels and the Overlords against each other to draw me into Crime Alley. How could I be so blind?”

“You can’t blame yourself for this.”

“Who then? Can I blame him? He’s insane.” Batman rested his hand against the wheel and leaned forward heavily, shaking his head. “How do I put an end to it? Catching him is never a problem. But Arkham Asylum can’t hold him, Jim. Neither can any other institution I can imagine. It’s an exercise in futility. Lock him away, and sooner or later he’s out again. And each time, the atrocity he commits is more insidious than the one before it, a vicious cycle that broadens geometrically, with no end in sight.
What do I have to do to stop him?”

There were moments in his life when he truly amazed himself; he was quick to recognize genius, particularly when it grinned back at him in the mirror, and the artistic precision with which he executed each new enterprise always left him breathless, as it did his victims. For each death seemed like a new brushstroke on the masterpiece of his life, and what it would reveal to its spectators when he was done perhaps even he couldn’t guess, nor find it within himself to care much, really. But nonetheless, Gotham City had proved to be a splendid canvas for his artistry, and though the poor fool might deny the charge vehemently, the Batman made a most inspiring muse.

Truth be told, the wretch had probably gone off the deep end after that last little bit of fireworks in Crime Alley. Everything had gone perfectly. Even the gangfight his boys had managed to instigate had drawn in the cowled chowderhead like a bat on a line. It was all too rich.

Leaving the hotel out of which he’d been operating, the Joker turned up the collar of his overcoat and lowered the wide brim of his hat over his face. Where were the boys? He did so hate to be kept waiting, particularly when he was eager to make himself scarce. Now that Batman knew that he was the genius behind the child-offings, he had to leave Gotham for a while to plot anew. He’d considered his options and finally settled on Metropolis as his next port of call. Perhaps he could amuse himself fencing with that other imbecile for a while.

But his ride was nowhere to be found. He’d be really annoyed if it turned out they’d deserted him. He was so looking forward to booting them out of the plane when they were high enough. Now it appeared he’d have to take a cab to the airport, and find some other diversion to amuse himself during the flight. Life’s little annoyances could really bring him down sometimes.

Halfway across the street, he heard thunder. Something that looked very much like a wide flat missile with headlights was rocketing toward him. “Oh, drat,” he muttered, and started running toward an alley. He felt the wind pulling at him as the Batmobile shot past.

Laughing uncontrollably, he drew out his Uzi as he ran, paving his way through the alley with a spray of death. A fence at the far end had a narrow gap in the middle of it and he slipped through into an adjoining alley, heading toward a nearby construction site. A couple of homeless people dove for cover from the gunfire. He aimed at them cheerfully as he ducked behind a cinderblock wall.

Something like a vice clamped onto his arm, jostling his aim, swinging him around. He lost his grip on the Uzi and smashed face first into a brick wall. Fists were suddenly slamming into him in rapid succession . . .

. . . and the Batman caught the Joker as the madman’s spindly body went suddenly limp. It had happened too quickly. Batman hadn’t managed to work off a tenth of the aggression he felt, and he’d hoped to make the Joker feel every ounce of it before he lost consciousness. Never mind. The police already had his henchman. Enough that the monster was in custody again.

Or was it?

He looked at the Joker thoughtfully and then, throwing the maniac over his shoulder, Batman picked up the Uzi and headed back for the Batmobile.

He watched from one of the upstairs windows as his father got out of his car and started coming up the front walk. Everything was ready. Mommy would be at the supermarket for at least another hour. Right after she left he’d started trashing the living room, throwing objects and lamps everywhere, overturning furniture. That would be enough to convince his father that something terrible had happened. The rest . . .

The moment Daddy started up the walk, he ran into his room and locked the door, then started wailing. The room was dark, and he kept crying hard and loud, screaming as if he were in agony. His father would walk in, see the state of the living room, hear his son’s distress, and bolt upstairs. Already he could hear his father’s rapid footfalls on the staircase.

He kept crying and reached for the iron. He’d had it plugged in and turned up full without any water for close to an hour. The heat and smell filled the little room.

His father banged on the door loudly. “Son! Sport, what’s happened? Unlock the door!”

He only cried louder. The banging grew worse. His father had started kicking in the door. A few more, and the heavy door would break.

He yanked the plug on the iron and climbed atop the dresser, watching as the door broke apart next to him. His father’s silhouette came into the room, then fell as the boy brought the hot iron down with all his might on top of Daddy’s head.

His father screamed. The boy grunted and leaped onto his back, bringing the iron down again. Something sizzled. Again and again he hammered at Daddy, until the moaning and the thrashing stopped.

He never figured out how long he knelt there, mechanically pounding away. So many times while it was happening he kept expecting to wake up, that he no longer understood the passage of time. Only when he heard his mother’s voice, as she screamed and screamed upon discovering him there, perhaps hours later, did the clock seem to start again. He looked up at her, his arms and front covered with blood, the gory iron still clutched in his tiny hands, and he smiled.

“S’okay, Mommy,” he told her. “I kept my promise, see? He won’t hurt you anymore. He won’t hurt you anymore.” But already he could tell something was terribly wrong. Mommy was shaking as she stood there, staring at him, terrified, tears streaming from her eyes, a low moan building in her throat. What was wrong with her? Couldn’t she see everything was okay now?

“Whatsa matter, Mommy? I did it for you.”

Again his mother screamed, an agonized howl that went on and on as she fled from him. He listened quietly as the sound receded out of the house and then was gone.

He leaned back against the dresser and looked over at cheerful Mr. Giggles in the corner, who still seemed happy despite the great big hole in his head. Then slowly, uncontrollably, he started laughing.

The cave.

A strange calm settled over him as he left the car and surveyed the cavern. The same calm, he reflected, that a baby must feel in the womb. Nothing outside exists. This is the whole of the universe.

Stalactites hung like jagged gray teeth from the ceiling, as if the cave were the maw of some great beast. If he listened very hard, he could hear the bats crying in the darker, deeper recesses. A shame about the bats, he thought.