Batman 1 - Batman (9 page)

“Carmine got a little hot under the collar.”

“You’re insane!” Ricorso shouted. He looked as if he wanted to leave.

The Joker was quite upset. “Haven’t you heard of the healing power of laughter?”

He started to laugh all over again.

“Now, get out of here!” he told Grissom’s goons. “And give it some thought.”

The joker’s boys escorted the other fellows out. The Joker grabbed a copy of the
Globe
and waved for Bob to stay behind.

“Bob,” the Joker spoke tersely, “I want you to take this camera and follow this reporter Knox. Find out what he knows about Batman. You’ve got to learn to
use
people, Bob.”

“Yes, sir,” Bob replied. Good old Bob. He always knew exactly the right thing to say.

Bob left. Everyone was gone now, except for the Joker and the charred corpse of Rotelli. Maybe it was time, the Joker thought, for a little conversation.

He turned to Rotelli.

“Your pals, they’re not such bad guys. What do you say we give them a couple of days to come around?”

He paused. He had to give Rotelli a chance to reply.

“No?”

The Joker could hardly believe his ears.

“Grease them now?”

Well, if that’s what he wanted.

“Okay.”

The Joker shook his head. “You’re a vicious bastard, Rotelli. I’m glad you’re dead.”

I
t had to be in here somewhere. WARNER . . . WATSON . . . WAXMAN was the last folder in the drawer. Where was it?

A pair of fingers tapped Vicki on the shoulder. She glanced around, right at a manila folder with the title “WAYNE, BRUCE.”

Allie Knox grinned at her. She grabbed the file from his hands.

“I’m looking for that.” It was a very thin file.

“I thought we were a team here.” Knox shook his head. “I’m losing confidence in you—going out with this weirdo.”

She opened the file. There was hardly anything in here: “Bruce Wayne Attends Society Fund-Raiser”; “Bruce Wayne Gives to New Orphanage.” This sort of filler wasn’t going to tell her a thing she needed to know!

She had had just about enough. She glared up at Knox. “You’re speaking strictly professionally, right? This wouldn’t be a personal issue for you, would it?”

“I just want you to do your job,” Knox replied defensively.

“I
am
doing my job!” Men! Vicki didn’t know the last time she had been so angry.

“Me too,” Knox insisted. “I’m protecting my partner. The guy collects weird weapons from Japan! He probably roller-skates through the female population like a bulldozer.”

Vicki punched the file with her fist. “Where does it say that, Knox? There’s nothing in this file but social puffery. No photos. No history. Nothing.
That’s
strange! Where’s he get his money? What’s he do all day?
Who is he?”

She flung the file angrily to the floor and stormed from the room.

“Who cares?” Knox called out after her.

She did, Vicki realized as she slammed the door behind her. She cared very, very much.

She would wait forever if she had to. She had parked a block away from Wayne Manor. Sooner or later, something would happen. She had that same feeling she had gotten sometimes, taking pictures in Corto Maltese, just before all hell broke loose.

Who was Bruce Wayne? If she hadn’t been so upset when she first looked at his file at the
Globe,
she would have realized something was really wrong. But she had put it down to sloppy filing at the morgue, or maybe Allie Knox keeping one or two choice pieces for himself.

It was only when she pursued her other contacts—a sports reporter (once a college sweetheart) who worked for the rival
Gotham Herald,
and an evening news anchorwoman who she’d become friendly with during her years in fashion photography—that she stopped thinking of the lack of publicity as simply strange. Now she thought of it as more of a conspiracy. The
Herald
’s file was every bit as skimpy and uninformative as the one at the
Globe,
full of short news fillers and society clippings. Strangely enough, they didn’t have any photos either. But it was the TV station that clinched it. There were no videotapes of Bruce Wayne on file at the station, even though Vicki’s friend could have sworn her evening news show had covered dozens of events that Wayne had been a part of.

A millionaire playboy who hobnobbed with the rich and famous every night, and never, ever had his picture taken? That sort of thing didn’t just happen. You had to consciously avoid all the “photo opportunities.” Even then, someone like Vicki was bound to take a candid of you when you least expected. What could you do then?

If you had Bruce Wayne’s kind of money, she imagined, you could always buy the pictures back from some newspaper or TV employee who needed a little extra cash on the side. But why?

Allie Knox might have been right for once. Bruce Wayne was more than a little strange. The more Vicki tried to find out about him, the less she realized she knew, until she was surrounded by a mystery that threatened to consume her.

Who was Bruce Wayne?
Maybe it had been her pride that had started her on this but it was her news instincts that would find the truth.

He had gotten too close to the wrong woman. Whatever Bruce Wayne was hiding, it wouldn’t stay hidden for long.

Someone dressed in dark glasses and a long black overcoat stepped from inside the gate of Wayne Manor. She thought it might be a workman until she focused her telephoto lens.

It was Bruce, dressed very much unlike a millionaire playboy. He paused to put on a pair of sunglasses, then walked toward the heart of the city, just another working man with a long and narrow package under his arm.

One more mystery, Vicki thought. But this one wouldn’t get away. Taking her camera with the helpful telephoto lens, she got out of the car. She paused long enough to lock the door—even in this neighborhood, one had to be careful—then walked, quickly but casually, in the direction Bruce had taken.

She had been following him for half an hour.

A ten-minute walk, and they had gone from the swank area around Wayne Manor to middle-class houses with tiny lawns, double- and triple-deckers, then larger and larger apartment buildings. Another ten minutes and the neighborhood had really started to deteriorate; some of the buildings here were deserted, and there were broken windows everywhere. Trash was piled in empty lots and on street corners. She had never thought before how close Wayne Manor was to this part of town. It was one of the things about living in a big city—you might be living on Easy Street, but poverty was just around the corner.

She walked about three quarters of a block behind Bruce, matching his pace, not wanting to get too close, but keeping him in sight. He never looked around. Whatever he was doing, he seemed totally self-absorbed.

In the last few blocks, some of the locals had started calling out to her—wolf whistles, asking for a date, a few other things that weren’t quite so polite. A young woman wasn’t supposed to walk alone through this part of town. Still, she didn’t think she was in any real danger. They might try for the camera. She kept it half hidden as she walked straight ahead. She doubted they’d do anything else in broad daylight with all these people around. If the worst happened, she’d learned to defend herself in Corto Maltese, anyway.

She had been most worried, at first, that Bruce would hear the taunts and turn around. But he only kept on walking, totally involved in his errand.

Bruce turned abruptly into an alleyway. Vicki hurried to catch up with him, afraid she might lose him if he was out of sight. She recognized this area. They were close to Seventh Avenue, not all that far from the center of town.

She stopped at the corner and took a step back. The alley was a dead end. Bruce stood there, staring at the three brick walls that enclosed him. He looked up at the sky, then over at the alley’s far corner. Stepping over torn trash bags and broken boxes, he walked over to that corner. He kicked some cans out of the way to clear a space.

Vicki raised her camera. She’d need the telephoto to get a closer look.

Bruce unwrapped his package. He pulled something out—something hidden by his back. He turned slightly. Vicki saw he was holding two long-stemmed roses.

Vicki clicked the camera shutter.

Bruce knelt, facing the corner, and placed the two roses, side by side, on the dirt and broken asphalt, almost as if he was making an offering to a shrine. He held his hand over his eyes.

Vicki clicked the shutter again.

He stood, and kicked one of the cans toward the mouth of the alley. He was walking back out! It was time for her to vanish.

He didn’t see her, hiding in the shadows behind the dumpster. He was still lost in whatever private world had brought him here. He turned down Broad Street, heading for City Square. Vicki resumed her chase, the usual three quarters of a block behind.

When she caught sight of Bruce again, someone was walking next to him. A street mime, with white painted face and outlandish striped costume. Vicki frowned. He was doing one of those mime things—feeling his way along an imaginary wall, she guessed. He wasn’t very good at it. She had never much cared for street mimes anyway.

There was a crowd ahead on the steps of City Hall. Bruce hesitated, staring at the commotion. Vicki hurried forward to get a better look, trying to determine what was happening while still keeping an eye on her prey.

The crowd shifted enough so that she could see what was going on in the middle. One of the local ganglords was there—Ricorso, Vicki thought. He was flanked by a couple of overmuscled bodyguard types and a smooth, well-dressed fellow who had to be a lawyer. Most of the rest of the crowd, she realized, were reporters, including Allie Knox.

She looked back at where Bruce had been a second ago, but he was gone.

“So what is this affidavit you’ve filed?” a reporter was asking. “Grissom
gave
you all his businesses?”

Ricorso glanced at his lawyer before answering. “Mr. Grissom asked me, as a personal favor, to take over the operation of his business until he returned.”

“Jeezus,” Knox chimed in, “that’s a pretty big gift. You must have been very close. Did you do a little time together as children?”

Ricorso sneered as the others laughed.

“I smell fresh ink, guys,” Knox added. “I’m sure you can prove all this. Why am I asking? Of course you can!”

Vicki looked around. She had taken her eyes off of Bruce for only a second. She couldn’t see him anywhere in the bustling square. She did see an awful lot of street mimes, though. There were at least half a dozen, climbing invisible stairs, walking against the wind, doing all those things that street mimes did. Vicki wondered if she’d wandered into some sort of special event.

She walked over to Knox. There were other photographers here, too. She saw one of them take their picture. Allie nodded to her as she approached. The lawyer was talking now.

“We have witnesses,” he said in an official-sounding monotone. “Grissom’s signature is perfectly legitimate.”

“It’s legitimate!” a new voice shrieked over the reporter’s questions. “I saw him! I was there!”

Yet another mime pushed his way through the crowd of reporters. This one not only had a chalk-white face, he had added bloodred lips.

“I saw it all,” the new mime said. “He raised his dead hand and signed the paper in his own blood. And he did it with this pen!” He reached inside his suit pocket to pull out a quill pen that must have been four feet long. He smiled over at Ricorso as he ripped off his top hat. The hair underneath was green!

“Hello, Vinnie!” he crowed. “It’s me, your uncle Bingo! Time to pay the check!”

With that, he hurled the steel-tipped pen straight at Ricorso’s jugular. Ricorso fell to the ground, clutching at the thing that had sliced through his throat.

Somebody screamed. Reporters scattered as the other mimes pulled machine guns from the satchels that they carried, guns they fired straight into the air.

Vicki dove behind a parked car. It was Corto Maltese all over again. Knox was right behind her. She looked cautiously back out into the square. There, standing completely still in the middle of the mayhem, almost as if he was in a trance, was Bruce Wayne.

Vicki waved to him as best she could from her hiding place.

“Bruce! Get down!”

Bruce acted as if he didn’t hear her. He began to walk, slowly at first, but with increasing speed with every step, toward the mime who had thrown the deadly quill.

The mime laughed, walking the other way. A car screeched to a halt in front of him. The mime calmly opened the door and climbed inside. The car sped away.

The other mimes fled to other cars, and, a moment later, they were gone as well. Racing automobile engines faded in the distance. Somebody was crying. Besides that, there was silence.

Vicki ran from her hiding place.

“Bruce?” she called.

At first, he still didn’t seem to hear her. She ran closer. He turned at last. Sweat was pouring from his face. His eyes were two deep hollows, as if he hadn’t slept for a month. But it was what was in those eyes that startled her the most—a look of sorrow and fear, like a small boy who had lost everything he ever had.