Batman 1 - Batman (8 page)

“Mirror!” Jack demanded.

The doctor cleared his throat, quickly picking up a hand mirror from the table at his side. He passed the mirror to Jack. Davis’s hand was shaking so hard that it took Jack a minute to grab the handle. He pulled the mirror in front of his face.

Oh, God!

The mirror slipped from his hands to shatter on the floor. Jack heard a low sob, which he realized must have come from his own throat.

“You—you understand that the nerves were completely severed, Mr. Napier,” Davis explained hastily.

Jack began to laugh.

The doctor pushed at the table behind him, rattling the outdated surgical equipment.

“You see what I had to work with here—”

Jack laughed even louder. The doctor covered his face, afraid to look at him.

“I’m sure,” Davis muttered, “with the proper recon—recon—reconstructive surgery—”

Jack couldn’t take it anymore. He walked out of Davis’s office, slamming the door behind him. And he laughed and laughed, screams of laughter echoing up and down the tenement halls.

He had been wrong. The joke wasn’t over yet.

It was just beginning.

God, what a day. He was getting too old for this.

He had thought the hot shower would help, but he was just too weary from all the phone calls, the legwork, the deals and arguments. That was the problem when you lost your number-two man. He had had to reshuffle the whole organization.

Grissom turned off the water and grabbed a towel. Too bad about Jack, but he knew as well as anybody what happened when you stepped out of line. Carl Grissom hadn’t gotten where he was today by being a nice guy

He heard the elevator door open in the next room and someone settle with a sigh into one of the overstuffed chairs. It was Alicia, back from her daily shopping spree. Security would have called him if it was anyone else.

“That you, sugar bumps?” Grissom called.

She didn’t answer. Probably too busy looking over what she bought today. He wrapped the big towel around his waist and grabbed a smaller one to dry his hair as he walked into the other room.

Alicia wasn’t in her usual chair. Grissom looked around the room. He could just make the silhouette. There was someone sitting behind his desk, someone totally covered by a raincoat, scarf, and oversized top hat. It didn’t look like Alicia.

“Who the hell are you?”

“It’s me,” the muffled figure answered dryly. “Sugar bumps.”

Grissom recognized that voice. “Jack?”

Maybe the other man nodded. It was too hard for Grissom to tell with all that clothing. They said he’d been shot, that he’d fallen into a vat of acid. How could he have survived? And what did he want now?

Grissom decided it was time to start covering his tracks.

“Thank God you’re alive,” he said with all the sincerity he could muster. “I heard you’d been—”

“Fried,” Jack interrupted caustically. “Is that what you heard?”

Jack stood up. Grissom tried to think what he could say next, to keep things under control. Grissom always kept things under control. But there was a slight problem with that control just now—Jack would have a gun.

“You set me up!” Jack spat out the words. “Over a girl. You must be insane.”

No, Jack, Grissom thought. I’m not the crazy one around here. He could feel his heart beating, much too fast. This kind of excitement wasn’t good for someone Grissom’s age. He edged casually around the corner of his desk. If he could only reach his desk drawer . . .

“Don’t bother,” Jack remarked.

Grissom stopped and looked at the gun pointing at his belly. This time, Jack was serious.

“Your life won’t be worth spit,” Grissom announced.

“I been dead once already,” Jack replied matter-of-factly. “It’s very liberating. You have to think of it as therapy.”

Jack raised the gun so that it pointed at Grissom’s heart. Grissom couldn’t let this happen. Jack had to listen to reason. Grissom had gotten out of worse than this.

“Jack—listen. We’ll cut a deal.”

The gun didn’t move. “Jack? Jack’s dead, my friend. You can call me Joker.”

Then this “Joker” took off his hat and coat. Grissom wished he had left them on. He hardly looked like Jack Napier at all anymore. His flesh was bone white, his hair as green as artificial turf. But it was his mouth that was really horrible. Something that happened in the accident must have frozen his flesh that way, his lips much too red against the rest of his skin, his mouth warped into a never-ending rictus grin.

“As you can see,” Jack replied, “I’m much happier.”

He giggled. He really was crazy. But his gun had moved when he took off his disguise. The muzzle was pointed at the floor. This, Grissom knew, was his only chance.

The giggling turned to laughter as Grissom lunged for the desk drawer. He laughed even harder as he turned his gun on Grissom and fired. And fired. And fired.

Bruce Wayne couldn’t sleep.

He’d gotten himself involved at the worst possible time.

He looked over at the woman who slept beside him in the king-size bed. She was a remarkable woman: witty, intelligent, and very beautiful. Her hair cascaded across the pillow. It seemed to glow in the moonlight. Her eyes closed, mouth open ever so slightly in sleep, she looked very peaceful, even innocent. Sleep brings out the child in all of us, he thought. She looked like a painting by one of the Pre-Raphaelites, even more beautiful in the moonlight than she had been in the glow of the setting sun.

Why did she have to come into his life now? After all his hard work, all his resolve, all his denial?

Maybe, Bruce thought, that was the answer. Maybe this regimen, this goal, this quest he had given himself was simply too much for any one man. Everyone had their needs, after all. As much as you tried to avoid them, they’d come back, one way or another.

And his needs had been answered by Vicki Vale.

The grandfather clock in the hall struck four. He looked at his watch. His watch said four as well. He climbed quietly out of bed.

She was so beautiful.

There were things he had to do.

He stepped to the window and looked out at the moon.

You ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?

Too bad he didn’t have the chance to say those words to Grissom. He had used up all his bullets instead. Ah, well. His life as the Joker had just begun.

The Joker sat in the dark. That way, he didn’t have to look at Grissom’s body, crumpled in a corner. He’d have to get someone to take it away, someone he could trust. That was the problem with being a criminal mastermind. All these niggling little details.

Still, this was a nice office that Grissom had given him—the Boss had taste in some things. And what a great view it had, with the city beneath him—a thousand sparkling lights, stretching to the limits of the window. And overhead, the moon, almost full again, his own, personal night-light.

The Joker sighed in contentment.

“Gotham City. It always brings a smile to my face.”

He glanced at the desk and saw the headline on the
Gotham Globe,
large enough to be legible in the moonlight: WINGED FREAK TERRORIZES GOTHAM’S GANGLAND!

Nice of Grissom to leave him this newspaper—a little blood-splattered, perhaps, but otherwise quite readable. He picked up the paper and hummed a happy tune.

“Watch it, Batman.” He chuckled merrily. “Wait until they get a load of me.”

Was that man going to sleep forever? And why had he gotten out of bed to sleep on a sofa?

Vicki was almost dressed, and all that Bruce had done was to roll over and mumble something incoherent.

He rolled again as she walked past. One eye struggled to open.

“Bruce,” Vicki said softly. “I’m late, but I’ve a proposition.”

He blinked and sat up. Actually, Vicki thought, he woke up pretty fast.

“I’ll make us lunch tomorrow,” she explained. “I’ll show you some of my photos.” She pulled a brush from her purse and ran it through her hair. “Will you come?”

Bruce stretched and smiled at her for a second before his expression became more doubtful.

“Sure. Oh, no—I—I can’t make it.”

She stopped brushing and looked back at Bruce.

“Oh. Is anything wrong?”

He shook his head sharply, as if to rid it of cobwebs.

“No—I—I’ve got a real important meeting.”

She put her brush away. “Well . . . later in the day?”

“No—I—I’ve got to leave town for a few days.”

Vicki frowned. Each time he answered her, it seemed less certain than the answer before. “Well, when you get back,” she said at last. She closed her purse and managed a smile. This was only a one-night thing, after all.

“Hey,” she said more brightly than before. “I’ve got to get moving. See you.”

She kissed him lightly on the cheek and walked away.

“Yeah,” Bruce replied quietly. “I’ll see you.”

And then she was out of the room.

Alfred met her at the end of the hall. He opened the front door for her.

“So nice to see you again, Miss Vale.”

“Yeah.” Vicki smiled at the gentleman’s gentleman. “I guess I’ll see you when you guys get back.”

“Back, ma’am?” Alfred asked with the politest of frowns. “We’re here for quite a while, I believe.”

“Oh,” Vicki replied, her cheer suddenly deflated. “Never mind. See you.”

She stepped through the doorway and walked away from her one night in Wayne Manor. So much for dreams where millionaire playboys were concerned.

This was the first time he’d been in Alicia’s apartment in ever so long. The place hadn’t improved in the meantime. But the Joker had an idea for a change or two.

She’d come in already, but she hadn’t noticed him. She was far too busy in the other room with her dress bags and packages. There! He could see her in the doorway.

“Honey!” he called.

She turned around. She dropped her packages. She screamed.

Was that any way to greet your lover? And here he was, in smoking jacket and slippers, dry martini at his side, reading the evening paper while waiting for his Alicia to come home.

Oh, well. Perhaps a little conversation would break the ice.

“You wouldn’t
believe
,” the Joker quipped, “what happened to me today.”

Alicia fell to the floor in a dead faint.

Then again, the Joker considered, perhaps their relationship needed some work.

This is the way it was supposed to be! All of Grissom’s ganglords in one big room—and the Joker at the head of the conference table.

“So that’s the way it’s supposed to be, gentlemen,” the Joker concluded. “Until Grissom resurfaces, I’m the acting president. And I say we start with this Gotham City Anniversary Festival and run this city into the ground!”

All of Grissom’s boys muttered to each other. The Joker certainly hoped they all appreciated his efforts. After all, it wasn’t as if he didn’t have to make sacrifices to run this meeting. First, there was all that trouble finding the flesh-colored makeup thick enough to cover his deadly pallor, then there was the black hair dye over his natural green. Just so he could look like Jack Napier again for this one important afternoon. Of course, there was nothing he could do about his charming new grin, but didn’t a big smile make life just that much more pleasant?

The Joker waited pleasantly for the gang’s decision. Oh, there were some, like that wimp accountant Luce, that were cowed from the minute he walked into the room. But there were others, like that Vinnie Ricorso over there, who wanted to think for themselves, who actually might question the Joker’s decisions.

The Joker allowed himself a silent sigh. Why was life always so full of Vinnie Ricorsos?

“Why don’t we hear from Grissom?” Ricorso demanded.

Carmine Rotelli was at the other end of the table. Rotelli was always good at being brave, as long as someone else was brave first.

“How come you’re wearing that stupid smirk?” Rotelli demanded.

“Because life’s been good to me,” the Joker replied.

But that answer wasn’t good enough for Rotelli.

“What if we say no?” he demanded even further.

But the Joker was ready for this too. A leader of men had to be ready for these eventualities.

“Nobody wants a war, Carmine,” the Joker replied smoothly. “If we can’t do business, we shake hands—and that’s it.”

“Yeah?” Rotelli asked, still a little doubtful.

“Yeah,” the Joker agreed. It was time for a demonstration. He stuck out his hand.

Rotelli stood and put his hand in the joker’s. They shook. It was too bad the Joker hadn’t told Rotelli about the joy buzzer.

Forty thousand volts surged through Rotelli’s body. What was left of him fell back into his chair, smoke pouring from what remained of his sleeves and shirt collar.

The Joker used only the very best joy buzzers.

The doors at the back of the room burst open, and the Joker’s own personal army marched in, much more personably dressed than the thugs already sitting in here. Of course, the fact that the Joker personally designed those colorful outfits had a lot to do with their stylishness.

The Joker grinned at good old Bob, his number-two man, as he explained: