Batman 1 - Batman (23 page)

Pain? Of course Batman felt pain. It seemed as though there had never been a time when he didn’t. It didn’t matter, not at all.

“I’m gonna kill you,” he said.

“You crazy bastard,” the Joker howled. “You made me! Remember? You dropped me into the acid. It was pretty hard to settle down after that! God knows I tried.”

“I know you did.”

Batman grasped the Joker’s shoulders and swung him into the slats of the nearest window. The wood splintered and the Joker tumbled outside, onto the roof.

The Joker was clutching his mouth. He dropped his hand and a pair of false teeth clattered to the tiles and began hopping toward the Batman. For a moment, Batman stared at the toy, distracted.

The Joker punched him in the face.

Batman returned the blow. The Joker stumbled, but managed to remain standing.

“You murdered my parents,” Batman said.

The Joker gaped. “What are you talking about?”

The Batman strode forward. “I made you—but you made me first.”

“You lunatic,” the Joker protested, backpedaling. “Crimminie ditch! I say you made me, so you have to say I made you? How childish can you get?”

The Joker slumped and wiped at the blood dripping from his chin. He took a pair of black-rimmed glasses from a pocket and put them on.

“You wouldn’t hit a man with glasses, would you?” he simpered.

Batman hit him.

The Joker flailed, shuddered as he glanced over his shoulder at the emptiness, and fell off the parapet.

Batman’s knees buckled. Vicki rushed to him and held him until he could stand alone.

Then, together, they peered over the rim of the parapet.

Vicki saw nothing but empty pavement below, visible in the glare of the spotlights.

Batman glanced upward. In the circle of the moon, there was the silhouette of a helicopter descending.

Vicki gasped. Fingers had grasped her wrist and were pulling her. She had a second to see that Batman, too, was being tugged over the edge of the roof.

As they dropped, Batman’s arm wrapped around her waist and, abruptly, she stopped falling.

Batman held Vicki in one hand. The other was stretched above his head, clutching the snout of a gargoyle.

The Joker stood on top of the grotesque statue, laughing.

“Grab something,” Batman told Vicki.

She found a hold on one of the gargoyle’s horns. Batman released her and reached for his utility belt.

The Joker stamped on his fingers.

Batman grabbed the Joker’s ankle.

The gargoyle moved. A puff of masonry wafted from where the statue joined the wall of the cathedral.

The Joker pulled his ankle free and kicked Batman in the head.

A gust of wind tore at Batman and Vicki. It was the downdraft of the helicopter, now hovering directly over the belfry. The noise from its engine was deafening.

The gargoyle shifted, tilted.

The Joker extended a hand toward Vicki. She looked into Batman’s face, asking a silent question.

“Do it,” he shouted. “I can take care of myself.”

Vicki grabbed the Joker’s hand. It slipped off the end of his arm and Vicki’s body swung outward. She began to fall, following the plastic hand toward the pavement. Batman caught her upper arm. She dangled over 800 feet of empty air, her hair whipping around her face.

The gargoyle tilted further.

A rope ladder popped from the belly of the helicopter and uncoiled down to the Joker. He grasped the bottom rung with his right hand and with his left fingers waggled a farewell wave at Vicki and Batman.

“Ta, ta,” he called.

Vicki was again gripping the horn.

Batman saw the Joker step onto the ladder. The roar of the helicopter grew louder and the aircraft started to rise, carrying the Joker with it.

He had done his best, Batman told himself. Maybe he could get Vicki and himself to safety before the gargoyle finally tore completely loose and then he could rest. He had earned rest. He deserved it.

He remembered Thomas and Martha Wayne. Blood spilling onto a dirty sidewalk. The sobs of the child he had been. The years of loneliness.

The Joker was rising into the circle of the moon.

Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?

The dance was not yet done.

Batman groped at his belt and found what he sought. He lifted the small gun and squeezed the trigger. A thin metal line shot out, up, and whipped around the Joker’s ankles. Batman wrapped the near end of the line around the gargoyle’s snout and secured it.

The Joker’s eyes widened as he saw what was happening. He screamed, “Stop! Wait! Down! Down!”

His voice was lost in the roar of the engine.

His body stretched between the ladder and Batman’s line.

Batman boosted Vicki onto the gargoyle and from there onto a ledge.

With a clatter of broken masonry, the gargoyle wrenched free of the wall and, like a pendulum, veered outward, hanging from the Joker’s ankles. The helicopter dipped a few feet and, as the engine grew still louder, began to climb again.

The Joker’s arms trembled with strain. Slowly, his fingers uncurled from the ladder.

For an instant, he seemed to be suspended in mid air.

Then, his lips split apart in a huge grin and he laughed. He shrieked with laughter as he plunged down, down, down.

The gargoyle shattered on the pavement and the laughter stopped. But it echoed through the canyons of the city. It seemed to echo forever.

Vicki flattened herself against the wall of the cathedral, aware that Batman was beside her. Her eyes were squeezed shut. She could hear, but she didn’t want to see.

She felt herself slipping.

“The ledge,” Batman said. “It can’t take our weight.”

She was falling, her eyes still closed. It was funny, she thought. After all she had been through, after the enemy was destroyed, she was going to die anyway.

No!

Batman saw the street rushing up to meet him. To meet him and to shatter him as it had shattered the gargoyle.

But he had time, maybe as much as two seconds, and that would have to be enough. If it wasn’t, the Joker would have won.

He unsnapped his grappling hook from the back of his belt, under his cape, and with a flick of his wrist sent it shooting sideways. It clanked against one of the lower gargoyles. Batman circled his wrist twice around the wire attached to the hook. The steel tines scraped against the back of the gargoyle’s head and sank into the soft stone.

Batman and Vicki jerked to a stop. The wire bit into the gauntlet of the Batman’s glove and a wave of agony surged from his shoulder to his injured ribs. It was, he knew, the last new pain he would have to endure this night.

He and Vicki hung a couple of yards above the pavement. Gordon and his cops were running toward them.

Batman lowered Vicki to the ground and, a second later, was standing next to her.

It was over.

Wasn’t it? Until this moment, Batman had not allowed himself the final proof. He had not seen the Joker’s body.

Now he did. He gazed past the shards of the gargoyle to the mottle of red and green and white and purple splayed on the asphalt. He focused on the face, on the ferocious grin—a wide, mirthless slash of a smile that seemed to mock death itself.

“Over there,” someone yelled.

Vicki turned to speak to Batman. He was gone.

S
lowly, Vicki walked to where a crowd was gathered over a body, facedown, completely covered by the Batman’s cape. Commissioner Gordon pushed his way through the cariosity seekers. Vicki followed his wake.

“Turn him over!” one of the onlookers yelled. “Now we’ll see who this guy is!”

Vicki moved to the front of the crowd as a couple of them turned over the body. Gordon knelt next to it, shooing the curiosity seekers away.

The man groaned as Gordon pulled off his hood.

It was Alexander Knox. He blinked in the sudden light

“Can I still make the late edition?” he asked.

This was the first press conference Gordon could remember looking forward to in a long, long time.

“All right,” Dent began, “members of the press. Commissioner Gordon and I have a few announcements to make.”

He waited for the reporters gathered around the steps to City Hail to quiet down a bit before he continued.

“First of all, to clear up a little misunderstanding.
Gotham Globe
reporter Alexander Knox is not the Batman.”

The reporters all laughed at that. Knox, standing next to Gordon and Dent, touched his bandaged head in a mock salute.

“On the other hand,” he remarked drily, “Batman is not Alexander Knox.”

Now it was Gordon’s turn to say a word or two.

“Our police officers have recovered, and, although some of them have sworn off coffee, they’re all back on duty.”

The reporters all laughed again. Finally, Gordon thought. This sort of event was a real pleasure, for himself and all of Gotham City.

It just proved you had to have faith. He had always told himself that if he waited long enough, he’d find something positive about his job.

Allie Knox was surprised to see a familiar, and very attractive, face next to him on the stage,

“Vicki?” he asked. “Are you covering this press conference?”

She smiled at him very sweetly.

“No,” she said softly, “I’m going to disappear for a while.”

She leaned over and kissed him—really kissed him.

For the first time he could remember, Alexander Knox was at a loss for words.

“It was a ride, wasn’t it, Allie?” Vicki said brightly as she turned to go. “See you around.”

“Wait a minute!” Knox yelled. He couldn’t let her go. Not after a kiss like that. “What about us?”

Vicki was already halfway down the street. Maybe, Knox realized, he needed a stronger argument.

“What about the Pulitzer Prize?” he added.

That made her turn around, at least.

“You get mine for me, Allie!” she shouted back.

But then she started walking again.

He jumped off the steps of City Hall, wincing when his head complained.

“What about your picture of the Batman?” he yelled.

“If he wants his picture taken,” Vicki called back over his shoulder, “he knows where to find me.”

She turned a corner and was out of sight. Another chapter closed in the life of Alexander Knox, ace reporter—another love lost before it could even start. He’d find it downright depressing if he didn’t have the evening edition to fill.

He looked back up at Harvey Dent, who had taken over the microphone again.

“We received a letter from Batman this morning,” Dent began as he pulled a folded piece of paper from his suit pocket. He read: “ ‘Gotham City’s earned a rest from crime. But if the forces of evil should rise again to cast a shadow on the heart of the city, call me.’ ”

If the forces of evil should rise again to cast a shadow? How melodramatic could you get? Knox grinned. This was going to make great copy. The public loved this sort of thing.

“Question,” he yelled out at the podium. He was, he realized, much more comfortable on this side of the press conference. “How do we call him?”

“He gave us a signal,” Gordon replied. He walked over to the far end of the stairs, where they had rigged up a searchlight. Gordon turned it on. The beam, bright and yellow, shone on the side of Gotham Cathedral—a yellow moon surrounding the shape of a bat.

Well, Knox thought, the public was going to love this too. Vicki Vale might be gone, but the Batman wasn’t.

Pulitzer Prize, here I come.

Vicki walked slowly through the city at sunset, a city that, somehow, felt much safer than it ever had before. Two small boys ran out of an alley, almost colliding with her. Both of the kids were wearing torn blankets behind them. Vicki realized they were supposed to be capes.

“Sorry, lady,” one of the boys apologized. “We was playing Batman.”

She watched them run away. It was nice kids could play like that again.

She heard a sound overhead, like a boot landing on cement. She looked up.

It was Batman.

A car pulled up at her side—a limousine. Alfred waved to her from the driver’s seat.

“I thought champagne might be in order, ma’am,” the butler suggested,

Vicki glanced up at the roof again. Batman was gone.

She got in the car. The bottle sat in an ice bucket, already opened for her.

“Mr. Wayne said to tell you he’d be a bit late,” Alfred remarked.

Vicki poured herself some champagne. “I’m not surprised, Alfred,” she replied. “I’m not surprised.”

They turned off the Bat signal as the sun set over Gotham City, a much quieter Gotham City. Down on the streets, people laughed, music played, life went on. And overhead, the gargoyles watched silently from the old Gotham Cathedral. Long ago, it was believed that gargoyles could protect a place from evil.

One of the gargoyles moved.

It was the Batman.