The Further Adventures of The Joker (54 page)

When she saw Gordon return the billfold to his pocket, she said softly:

“Why not, Daddy? Why not call him?”

“No,” Gordon said, shaking his head. “It’s not the end of the world. People are killed every day in a big city, some accidentally, some on purpose . . . That man deserves a couple of weeks of peace, doesn’t he?”

“That’s not your reason,” Barbara said crisply. “You’re not worried about Batman getting in some beachtime. How can he get a tan, anyway, in that mask of his?”

“I’m sure it’s no joke to him, baby. Batman is human. He needs some rest. Besides, there’s no real proof of any kind of . . . conspiracy.”

“Well, I think it’s nothing but pride—stubborn macho pride! You just don’t want Batman to think you can’t get along without him.”

“I’m going to bed.” Her father sighed. “Maybe the headlines will look better in the morning.”

Commissioner Gordon’s bedtime prayers were answered. There were one or two minor crime stories on the front page, but the main headline in the Gotham press was an upbeat one.

ENGLAND’S QUEEN ELIZABETH TO VISIT U.S.

Gotham City First Stop on Tour

“Isn’t that terrific?” Barbara beamed. “Maybe you can pull a few strings at the Mayor’s office so we can be presented to her.”

“You know our Mayor,” Gordon said, cheerful at last. “He’ll use the visit to pick up a few more votes. That’s all he cares about these days.”

“And I suppose you’re going to get all hot and bothered about Security.”

“That won’t be our responsibility alone. This is international stuff, baby. We’ll do our part, of course, but it’ll be the Feds calling the shots.” He pulled her onto his lap, big as she was. “And what’s so important about being presented to a Queen? Since you’re already a Princess.” He gave her a loud “smack” on the forehead, and Barbara laughed, pleased to see his new mood.

The messages on his desk tempered that mood only slightly. There was a barroom knifing, with the culprit swiftly apprehended. A fire in a movie house, with the projectionist sustaining third-degree burns. There was a wife-beating, a gas station robbery, and only one murder marked P.U.—Perpetrator Unknown. It was a woman named Lola L. Finch, 58, widowed, strangled in the hallway of her apartment building. There was something vaguely familiar about the name, but Gordon soon put it out of his mind.

There was a hurricane of activity at Headquarters that day, and as he correctly assumed, the royal visit was at the eye of it. The trip had actually been planned weeks before, but publicity had been kept to a minimum for security purposes. And, of course, the FBI and Secret Service had formulated a plan that gave Gotham’s own police force an essential but secondary role in the proceedings. When he saw Jaffe, the Police Chief described the visit as a royal pain in the neck, but he didn’t seem all that displeased about it. Between the recent series of disasters and unmotivated slayings, his men had been working long tours of duty. It was a relief to give them a benign assignment like crowd control.

Barbara was ecstatic. The Mayor, as her father predicted, didn’t let the opportunity for political haymaking slip by. He quickly made arrangements for a reception at his Mansion, and concocted a guest list of Gotham’s most influential people. Since there was an arctic zone between him and the Police Commissioner, Barbara had no hope of receiving an invitation. But then it turned out that Mark Something-or-Other was actually a scion of one of Gotham’s most distinguished families, and they were on the A list. Cinderella was going to the Ball, and Prince Charming was going to be her escort.

Gordon was happy for his daughter, even if he still didn’t approve of her choice of beau. He was also content not to attend the party, preferring a quiet evening in front of the television set, or rereading some old Dickens novel in his bed, under a thick comforter.

He chose the latter entertainment the night of the party, only he had a hard time choosing the Dickens novel out of the bound set his wife had given him on their leather wedding anniversary. The memory of that time made him decide to browse through another kind of volume: the scrapbook they had started together to commemorate the first years of their marriage. It had ended with Barbara’s birth. Or rather, it had been the beginning of Volume Two, exclusively devoted to their daughter.

Gordon settled into his bed with the big book in front of him, and turned the pages.

There weren’t many photographs. Gordon had always been camera-shy, so most of the snapshots were of his wife. She smiled in almost all of them, and not because she had been told to say “cheese.” She had simply been a woman who smiled.

But what the book lacked in photographs it made up in souvenirs. There were dance programs, theater tickets, invitations, newspaper clippings. There were few items related to Gordon’s career, since he didn’t think police activities belonged in a family album, but if some item tickled his wife’s fancy, she would include it. Like the news story about his participation in a police raid on a burlesque house (anything
didn’t
go in those days). When the young officer had been assaulted by the selfstyled Queen of Burlesque who called herself Lola Lollipop . . .

Gordon laughed as he looked at the faded clipping. Even now, decades later, he could recall the heavily painted face of the enraged stripper, whose ferocious attack had resulted in his first service wounds. Lola Lollipop! She had actually written him a letter of apology a year later, when she had abdicated her throne and married one of the arresting officers. What was his name again? Finch, wasn’t it? Little Joe Finch, who barely made the minimum department height? And what was Lola, six feet, a hundred and eighty pounds?

Lola . . . Lollipop . . . Finch.

He stopped laughing and sat upright in bed, recalling where he had read that name so recently—in the crime diaries. It had been poor old Lola who had been strangled in the hallway of her apartment house. It was probably drug-related, according to the investigating officer, some neighborhood junkie who killed her for her welfare money. It was a reasonable theory, except for one troubling detail: there had been six dollars and change in Lola’s purse . . . A mugger, especially one desperate enough to kill, would have cleaned her out . . .

“Damn!”
the Commissioner said aloud, a strict upbringing making it the strongest invective he ever used. “There’s something here . . . Something I just can’t see yet . . .”

There was a yellow pad in the night-table drawer beside his bed. He put it on his lap, and began a list of Victims.

The Bobby Armstrong Band

The Yacht Club Orchestra

John Burke, Headwaiter

Jackie Jeeps, Comic

Johnny Fisher, Columnist

Rudolph “Blackjack” Bottoms

Cindy Lou Skinner, Miss Wonderful

Lola Lollipop Finch, ex-Stripper.

He stared at the list. It wasn’t complete. There had been other victims of various crimes in Gotham City, but these were the most unmotivated ones that came to mind. Was there a Common Denominator among them? Was it “show business?” Was there some mutual interest? Was it some kind of vendetta? And what was it about the last entry, about Lola Lollipop, that had tweaked his intuition?

Then he remembered.

Burlesque Queen
.

That’s how Lola had styled herself, as so many other strippers had (when they weren’t calling themselves “exotic dancers” or “ecdysiasts.”) Lola had been the “Queen” of Burlesque. And what did they call the winners of competitions like the “Miss Wonderful” pageant?

Beauty Queens
.

Then Gordon remembered one “victim” he had neglected to list: the Caribbean cruise ship now resting on the bottom of Gotham City Harbor.

The Carib Queen.

His heart was beginning to pound.

He went back to the head of the list and pondered the death of thirty-six musicians and four strangers whose names began with
J
.

John Burke, the headwaiter who had caught God’s eye.

What if he had been called “Jack?” Like so many “Johns?”

Jeeps, the stand-up comic, no longer vertical.

He was “Jackie” and “Jackie” was a diminutive of “Jack”

Johnny K. Fisher, the columnist, now gossiping with Gabriel.

Born “John” and possibly nicknamed “Jack?”

And finally, Rudolph Bottoms.

Better known as “Black Jack.”

One, two, three, four Jacks.

Thirty-six players, four Jacks, and three Queens
. . .

It was either a gruesome coincidence—or a ghastly nightmare. Was someone playing a terrible game with human lives? A demonic game of cards? Were there going to be fifty-two victims shuffling off their mortal coils? What was the object of the game? And who was behind it?

The answer thundered inside the Commissioner’s brain until he thought it would burst. His worst fear might be coming true, that the dreaded Joker was once again dealing a hand of horror in Gotham City.

It was enough to give him a splitting headache, and Gordon went to the bathroom medicine cabinet in search of an analgesic. But as he lifted the little white pills to his mouth, he caught a glimpse of his pale face in the mirror, and it seemed to take on a life of its own as it stared back and shouted at him:

“Only
three
queens, you idiot! Only three—
so far!”

He dropped both pills and water glass into the sink and scrambled for the phone, trying to control his suddenly palsied fingers. His instincts didn’t fail him. He remembered the number of the emergency line in the Mayor’s office, and a special operator told him to hang on while the Mayor was located, but of course, he was warned, Hizzoner was very busy at the moment, considering the reception that evening . . . Gordon exploded angrily, saying
damn!
to the reception, and that he would rather speak to Chief Jaffe or the FBI or the Secret Service anyway and she damned well better hurry if she didn’t want a royal assassination on her conscience . . .

While he waited, listening to the arrhythmical drumbeat of his heart, Gordon tried to control his panic. It wasn’t only the Queen’s peril that was on his mind. His own daughter was in that danger zone, and who knows how many might die in an attempt to breach the security wall?

A voice on the phone.

“Mr. Mayor!” Gordon shouted. “Is everything all right? Has anything happened yet?”

“No,” the Mayor said sourly. “And it looks like it’s
not
going to happen. Lot of disappointed people around here. You calling to gloat?”

“What are you talking about?”

“About the Queen. She never made the party. Seems there was some kind of cabinet crisis back home, and she decided not to come. Lots of apologies, but that hasn’t made all these spiffed-up ladies happy. They’ve been practicing curtsies all week . . .”

The phone almost dropped from Gordon’s hand. He wasn’t sure if the Mayor heard his “Thank God!” If he did, he probably thought the remark was spiteful rather than relieved.

There was no way he could avoid explicating his theory to Barbara. When Mark Something-or-Other brought her home at three that morning, she wasn’t nearly as despondent over Her Majesty’s nonappearance as Gordon expected her to be. In fact, her mood was slightly giddy, a state he ascribed to champagne and the glitter of the occasion. It was apparently a little more than that, since she didn’t stop talking about Mark, Mark, Mark until sleep overcame her.

But at Sunday breakfast, she listened to her father’s “deadly deck” theory, and her mood turned solemn.

“Oh, Daddy,” she said with a sigh. “You’re not actually going to
tell
this to anybody? I mean, officially?”

“I know it sounds farfetched, Barbs. But think about it! What else would explain such a bizarre series of events?”

“Coincidence would explain it,” she said. “I mean, these four ‘Jacks’ of yours . . . Well, lots of men are named John, it’s probably the most common name in Gotham City. And a ‘beauty queen’ or ‘burlesque queen’ aren’t really the same as . . . well, the Queen of England!” The recollection made her sigh even deeper. “Boy, Her Majesty doesn’t know what she missed last night. Mark looked so
handsome
in that tuxedo.”

Barbara went back to bed, leaving him with daylight doubts and the Sunday paper.

The front page was full of political news, including the cabinet crisis in Great Britain, but there were some human-interest items, too.

SHORTY DAVIS, 73, DIES IN CRASH

Decorated Pilot in both WWII
and Korean Conflict

Gordon read the story with only desultory interest. Davis had been killed in a privately owned single-engine plane. Davis’s wife had been stunned by the crash, swearing that her husband always made an elaborate flight check before takeoff, and the skies had been friendly.

It was only while he was putting the dishes away that Gordon revised the headline in his own mind.

SHORTY DAVIS, ACE PILOT,
DIES IN CRASH

Wasn’t that equally accurate?

Davis was an
Ace,
and now he was dead.

If the brakes of a bus can be tampered with, why not the controls of an airplane?

Was Shorty Davis the first of
four
Aces that were marked for death?

Barbara’s caution was proper, of course. It was a nebulous theory, and hard to prove, especially with the ambiguous terminology involved. But if he was right, there were going to be more deaths and more disasters, until all the Queens, Kings, and Aces in the deck were gone, leaving only the Joker to celebrate his victory over—what? The purposeless, senseless madness of it all was appalling, but that didn’t lessen the danger or the urgency.

Gordon, despite the apron around his waist, his hands submerged in sudsy water, still looked like a heroic statue a sculptor might have entitled RESOLVE.

Let them laugh at him. Let them think he was as unbalanced as the Joker himself. He was going to put his reputation on the line.

The next morning, in the D.A.’s conference room, Gordon took a deep breath and plunged in.

Everybody listened respectfully to his “Deadly Deck” theory. Only one person smothered a chuckle. Mark Something-or-Other, obviously trying to make points with Barbara’s old man, said he found the Commissioner’s theory “interesting.” But there was no doubt that the skeptical level around the table was very high.