Wayne of Gotham (4 page)

Bruce stepped around the platform, drawing the fuel nozzle out of its cradle, the hose slinking along behind it toward the vehicle. Bruce touched the pattern on the surface of the car and the fuel cap enclosure opened where the surface had previously appeared seamless. “Is it the board of directors again? Are they singing that old song about ousting me?”

“No, sir … well, yes, sir, but this time the pressure is coming from the Securities and Exchange Commission,” Alfred pressed on. “You remember the scandal involving Tri-State Home and Hearth?”

Bruce pushed the fuel nozzle into the opening and activated the pump. He leaned back against the side of the vehicle, feeling its malleable surface give slightly under his weight as he crossed his arms. “You would think that with all this power
and
a butler standing at hand, I wouldn't have to pump my own gas, would you?”

“Sir, if you would please just concentrate for a few—”

Bruce released the seals on his gloves and began pulling them off. “Yes, I remember Tri-State … it was the mortgage-holding division of our finance side. They were the ones who issued all those subprime loans. Carl Rising was the CEO, and together with his CFO, Ward Olivier, they approved that policy against our corporate directives.”

Alfred raised an eyebrow.

“I
don't
just wear this cape, Alfred,” Bruce said, rubbing his eyes. The nozzle clicked and he pulled it from the car, sealing the opening again. He continued talking as he placed the fuel line back in place. “We cleaned up Tri-State and kept their doors open. I fired both Rising and Olivier and, as I recall, both of them are under federal indictment.”

“Yes, but the SEC isn't satisfied with them,” Alfred said, nervously adjusting the cuffs of his tailored shirt, the onyx cuff links flashing even in the spare lights of the cave. “They've approached both Federal Trade and the Department of Justice to come after Wayne Enterprises under the Sherman Act.”

“Antitrust?” Bruce chuckled. “Really?”

“They're also talking about RICO, sir,” Alfred swallowed hard after pushing out the words.

“Racketeering?” Bruce shook his head. “They can't be serious.”

“Sir, they are looking for an excuse … ANY excuse … to take apart Wayne Enterprises.” Alfred reached up and tugged at his collar. “And with public sentiment running against big business and all the negative publicity that we've had about Tri-State—”

“Alfred, that
is
your job,” Bruce said, reaching back into the vehicle. He pulled out the Scarface dummy, which still held the invitation card. “We all have a job to do. Yours is to be my public relations director and personal assistant. Those were the titles that I gave you with the raise. You seemed pleased enough at the time, remember?”

“Yes, sir, I remember it well,” Alfred replied with a sniff. “Although I do still seem to be making your meals and dusting the banister.”

“Exactly.” Bruce held up the horrific gangster dummy with the card attached to its hand as he walked quickly past Alfred up toward the main investigation platform. “I, on the other hand, have got to do
my
job and fathom why the Spellbinder was herself spellbound by the Ventriloquist's Scarface dummy and the meaning of this strange invitation.”

“But I already have one, sir.” Alfred shrugged.

“What are you talking about?” Bruce said, setting the dummy down on the testing bench.

“This invitation,” Alfred replied, pulling an identical card out of the breast pocket of his jacket.

Bruce frowned. “Where did you get that?”

“Where did
anyone
get them?” Alfred shrugged, turning the card over in his hand. “Everyone in Gotham and the surrounding municipalities received one today. It's taken over the news reports.”

“Everyone?” Bruce asked. He moved to the Batsuit locker as Alfred spoke, pressing the release points on the new Batsuit as he moved. The arms' exomusculature released from the attachment points at the shoulders, unsealed, and pulled free down both arms. The shoulder segment released next from the torso manifold, taking the cape with it over his head. He quickly placed each in its supporting rack position.

“They say there was a computer error at the Gotham Powerball Lottery offices that generated the mailing of these defective cards to everyone in the city. There is one on the foyer mail table addressed to you as well.”

“That's no computer error,” Bruce said, sitting down on the bench next to the locker, releasing his boots, and then pulling them free. The Utility Belt—a power supply for the Batsuit—he set into the charging station built into the locker. “It's a cover story and a rather hastily baked one at that.”

Bruce stood up. Still wearing the long microtube garment that kept him cool beneath the powered armor, he stepped back to consider his latest incarnation of the Batsuit.

It's a good design. Not perfect. It will be better next time.

“Master Bruce?”

Bruce reached over and snatched the invitation out of Alfred's hand. “I've got work to do, Alfred. That will be all.”

Alfred's eyebrow seemed to pull his nose into the air as he started climbing the stairs. There was a secured elevator that would take him up to the Manor but not until after another two-story climb up into the darkness of the cavern. “Of course, sir. Will you be expecting breakfast?”

Bruce sat down on a stool at the lab bench and switched on the light of his large magnifying glass. He turned the card over and over beneath it. The card appeared to be common except for the printing. There was something strange about the ink …

Bruce looked up.

“Alfred, did you say something?”

“Just asking if you wanted your breakfast, sir.”

There was a plaintive quality in Alfred's voice that Bruce could not remember having heard before. “Yes, I would. Thank you, Alfred.”

Alfred nodded and began again to climb the stairs.

Bruce tried to look closer at the card but was suddenly distracted by a smell that connected in his memory. It was a warm, musty smell of autumn leaves and green grass. It reminded him of laughter.

“Alfred?”

The old man stopped on the stairs. “Yes, sir?”

“What is it like outside?”

A second silence stretched between them filled with thought.

“It is the promise of a beautiful day, Master Br—It is a beautiful day, sir,” Alfred responded as he looked down on the circle of dim light illuminating Bruce alone in the midst of the cavern. “Indian Summer today, I believe they call it. The storm has cleared off to the east and we're expecting slightly warmer temperatures under clearing skies. Breezy, cool, but pleasant.”

“Pleasant.” The word rolled off of his tongue like a foreign, unknown thing. A sunny day in Gotham. No, he thought, there was no such thing. Gotham was a never ending night. Gotham was a rain that never healed, never cleaned. Gotham was dirt and decay and rot that festered, a disease for which he alone was the cure; he alone stood between the great abyss and justice for those who called the darkness home.

The darkness is Gotham. The darkness is my world.

“Will there be anything else, sir?”

Bruce looked up.

The smell of leaves.

The sound of laughter.

“You can call me Master Bruce, Alfred,” he said quietly. “It's all right, if you like.”

“Thank you, Master Bruce.” Alfred smiled as he turned and continued up the stairs.

Bruce Wayne continued to hold the card in his hand, but his eyes were fixed on the exit from the cave, the rushing sound of the falling waters … and the smell of a bright autumn day.

B
ruce Wayne, playboy of Gotham, with inexhaustible wealth, had become the Howard Hughes of the new century.

For more than a decade, he had disappeared from public life. National news commentators collected their appearance fees by filling in the gaping blanks in the meaning of his absence by tracing his disappearance to September 11, 2001. Local newscasters, on the other hand, would annually and at regular intervals fill a little more airtime by pulling out the file footage on his parents' violent deaths—lately with computer-generated reenactments of the murders—and trace the reclusive peculiarities to these understandable roots. Articles in the financial section of the
Gotham Globe
sold their papers with the claim that the Wayne heir's mental aberrations were rooted in the mid-1990s and the rise of neoliberalism. Their competition, the
Gotham Gazette
, took a completely different point of view, insisting the underlying causes that had unhinged him were to be found in the economic explosiveness of a 1980s marketplace released from the restraints of ethics or social conscience. Several biographies—each unauthorized and always the subject of a perfunctory lawsuit—insisted it was a former lover, either female or male, who had jilted the unbalanced Wayne. Two of these had hit a little too close to the mark.
Tarnished Princess: How Julie Madison Became Portia Storme Without Really Trying
had been a bestseller exposé that centered as much on Bruce as it had on his former college girlfriend's strange and meteoric life. The other one, the far more lurid
Slain Manor: The Strange Case of Vesper Fairchild
, had revived interest in the sensational murder of the popular television reporter and personality whom Bruce had dated briefly before trying to cool things off … only to be arrested when her body was discovered in his home. Those books were the exception; for the most part the players in these fantasies were shadows. The public, it seemed, was ravenous for any lurid ink regarding the Prince of Gotham and was willing to pay tabloid and paperback prices to read it. Each one promised to spotlight a new damsel in distress or hooker with a heart of gold. Their identities were always known only to the author, who was only willing to divulge the secret to anyone willing to purchase his book, pad his royalties, and wade through the shocking, fictional details.

They knew absolutely nothing about Bruce, but that was not permissible for the media maw that had to be fed, and so they filled the silence with their own wild imaginings and sold all the more airtime, newspapers, books, and blogs in the process.

They would have all been outraged, however, to know the truth: that Bruce reveled in it.

It all added to the mystery and never approached the truth—an even better cover than before. The connection to Hughes was an obvious one and only needed a little push. Alfred was promoted from “gentleman's gentleman” to press agent and public relations manager at about that same time. Alfred Pennyworth became the face the media associated with Bruce Wayne whenever anyone came calling or needed a statement. Bruce even reveled in the game, appearing from time to time in a latex mask he had fashioned for himself, hunching over in a wheelchair and wearing large dark glasses, a wide-brimmed panama hat, and an afghan draped around his shoulders. He had forced Alfred to push him around the east gardens in the costume at random intervals until one of the paparazzi showed up on the grounds and managed to snap a slightly out-of-focus image of the two of them going for a stroll. The security sensors placed throughout the grounds of Wayne Manor had alerted Bruce to the intruder's presence long before the paparazzo saw them. Still, the picture had become the iconic image of Bruce Wayne, the recluse: an incredibly wealthy but broken man. Bruce and Alfred were occasionally forced to repeat versions of this charade whenever other photographers took a chance on the grounds, but that first photograph had become iconic.

Now maybe they'll leave me to my work.

It had been a wonderful dream, but Bruce discovered there is nothing so public as being too private. In time, however, Bruce Wayne faded from interest, only to become a mythic figure whose image had been so reshaped that no one knew any longer what the real Bruce Wayne even looked like.

Wayne Estate Grounds / Bristol / 6:32 a.m. / Present Day

Multibillionaire Bruce Wayne climbed out of the ravine in the cloth canvas jacket, a flat cap on his head. His face was covered in rough stubble. The eyes squinted in the bright, clear morning as he moved from shade to dappled shade beneath the forest of trees. He allowed the footfalls of his hunting boots to smash down through the undergrowth … an unaccustomed luxury.

The great lawn is across the slope. Father used to host enormous gatherings on that lawn behind the manor.

The lawns were always impeccably manicured, but now their silence was broken only by the occasional trill of a meadowlark. The magnificent view down toward the north branch of the Gotham River and across the waters to the unique skyline of Gotham itself remained unappreciated. There would be no music. No laughter would disturb a single blade of grass.

It would make a fine cemetery.

He needed to think. He had been scanning the invitation card when suddenly, in the darkness of the caverns, his memory had taken him back to a different time.