The Further Adventures of The Joker (19 page)

Alfred gasped. “Surely you do not contemplate—!”

“I don’t have a choice, Alfred,” Bruce Wayne said coldly.

“But if you give in to this . . . this terrorist’s demands, what is to stop him from—”

“The Batman.”

“Sir?”

Bruce Wayne stood up in the crepuscular atmosphere of the Batcave. The gold shield on his gray chest caught the light, making the nonreflective bat emblem seem like a bottomless black hole.

“The Batman will stop him,” Wayne repeated. “This is between the Joker and him.”

Dutifully, Alfred lifted the black ribbed cloak and cowl of the Batman to his master’s shoulders.

“Not yet, Alfred,” Wayne said crisply. “There’s something you must do first.”

“As you wish, sir.”

Commissioner James Gordon braved the new November winds on the roof of police headquarters impatiently. The stars were out tonight. He always dreaded cloudless nights like this, but somehow the clear night sky no longer mattered. It was the third night. And the body of the third victim—investment banker H.P. Quincy—had been found floating skull-down in the Gotham River. His face would arrive wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag with the morning mail, just as the others had.

Gordon switched on the Bat-Signal. Its ghostly finger stabbed at the stars. But without cloud cover, the bat emblem was lost in the stars.

Gordon sighed. He wondered why he kept faith with the masked man whose name he never knew.

He didn’t hear the roof hatch ease up and a tall inky figure emerge. The figure padded forward, wrapped in a ribbed black cloak against the bitter night. Burning eyes looked out from a cowl whose erect ears resembled Gothic church steeples.

“Gordon.” The voice was sibilant and breathy.

Commissioner Gordon turned just as the silhouette of the Batman spread its cloak to display a lean gray-clad body.

“Batman! Where have you been?”

“Never mind. Long story. What counts is that I’m here now.”

“I had given up on you.”

“Had you?” the other said, nodding to the Bat-Signal’s attenuated beam. His upraised cloak kept his face in shadow.

“Almost,” James Gordon admitted.

“I’m going to meet him.”

“I can’t stop you.”

“Would you if you could?”

“The city’s in an uproar. The mayor wants your head. Politically, I’m between hammer and anvil.”

“The mayor wants my head and the Joker wants my face. I much prefer the Joker’s alternative. I’m going to have to unmask. I thought you’d want to be the first to behold my true face.”

Gordon started. “I-I’d be honored,” he said solemnly.

The inky black figure drew closer. His boots were eerily silent on the tarpaper roof. It was as if he glided instead of walked.

As he entered the Bat-Signal’s backglow, his pale pointed chin became visible. And the thin-lipped scarlet leer it framed.

“Mwee hee heee!” the Joker cried, throwing back his cowl.

“Joker!”

“Did you think that
you
were immune, Gordon?”

Gordon took an involuntary step backwards. “Stay back!”

“The Batman doesn’t care about the ordinary folk of Gotham,” the Joker growled. “So I thought I might lure him from his belfry with a dear, dear, friend.
You!”

Commissioner Gordon retreated to the roof edge. There was no escape. The bat cloak followed him, enveloping like a shroud. He never felt the hypodermic bite into his forearm.

In the network of alleys near police headquarters, Batman parked the Batmobile in a deserted loading dock. He kept his cloak tight about him to stifle the betraying yellow-gold of his utility belt and chest emblem as he flitted from shadow to shadow.

Outside police headquarters, twin green globes shed a welcoming glow, but the Dark Knight ignored them. His shadowed eyes went to the rooftop where moths danced in a tunnel of light like paper bats.

Batman tested the old brick building façade with gloved fingers and began to scale in utter soundlessness.

He slid over the roof edge like something out of a Bram Stoker nightmare. The roof was deserted, the Bat-Signal unattended. He reached over to shut it off when the backglow reflecting on glass stopped him. He strode over to the reflection and knelt.

He touched a familiar pair of eyeglasses resting on a pasteboard playing card. The leering face of the Joker stared back at him through the lenses.

The visible part of his face hardened into a grimace of hatred. Batman straightened up, crushing the card in one hand.

In a swirl of cloak fabric, he turned and disappeared over the parapet.

High above, the moths swirled around the Bat-Signal as if feeding on a ghostly rag.

“Get those cameras set up!” The Joker called the order down from the gloomy catwalks of a vast industrial storage building.

Dutifully, Punkin Head and Jack-O’-Lantern hefted video cameras onto their Halloween shoulders.

“I don’t get it, Boss,” Jack grumbled. “Why are we bothering with all this junk? He won’t show. And even if he does—”

“Leave the thinking to me, piefilling-for-brains,” the Joker snarled. He turned to Commissioner Gordon, who sat with his wrists and ankles bound to the armrest and legs of a wooden chair perched precariously close to the catwalk’s lip.

“You’re mad!” he said gratingly.

“Thanks for the reminder,” the Joker said acidly. “I had almost forgotten. And I’m getting fed up with your whining.” He looked around the box-strewn catwalk, saying, “What to do, what to do? Ah!” His maniac eyes alighted on a carved jack-o’-lantern. Grinning, he upended it over Gordon’s furious head.

“If you get hungry,” the Joker told the upside-down jack-o’-lantern face as he descended the catwalk steps, “feel free to
gnaw.”

“Cameras all set up, boss,” Punkin Head said, throwing the Joker an A-OK sign.

“Take your positions,” the Joker snapped. “And let the charade begin. If he’s going to come, he won’t wait for tomorrow night.”

Batman piloted the Batmobile through the industrial side of Gotham City. Through the knife-nosed steel bat’s head mounted on the grille, he watched the headlights sweep the road. He had taken the old Batmobile out of storage. It was like driving an aircraft carrier on wheels. But the sporty open-cockpit version would not do for tonight’s showdown.

The smokestacks of the Monarch Playing Card Factory came into view. He could almost smell the nostril-stinging vapors from an adjoining chemical plant even through the Batmobile’s bulletproof Plexiglas dome.

It was there it had all begun. It was there that Batman had first accosted a red-hooded thief in the act of a crime. And it was there that the nameless man, fleeing the dreaded Batman, had fallen into the industrial waste sluice to emerge, white-faced and crack-grinned, as the Joker.

The gate came into view. Batman threw the wheel sharply to the right. The massive bat head rammed the padlocked fence apart. He accelerated. A corrugated loading door appeared in his bouncing headlight beams. The throaty roar of the Batmobile’s engine became a song.

The door crumpled, and lifted, to bounce off the cockpit bubble. The Batmobile slewed right, sending a stacked pyramid of industrial drums rumbling and rolling in all directions. It skidded to a stop in the middle of the open concrete floor.

Batman waited.

“Did someone knock?” It was the Joker’s mad voice.

His narrow face peered up from a stack of drums.

Batman picked up a dashboard microphone and spoke into it. His steely amplified voice reverberated off the walls.

“I’m here, Joker.”

“Noooo!” the Joker mocked. “And I thought you were the lead float of the Macy’s Parade.” He snapped his fingers. Punkin Head and Jack-O’-Lantern scooted down from the catwalks, lugging video cameras on their shoulders like a lunatic TV newscrew. They clambered atop the Batmobile, pressing their lenses to the dome.

“Any time you’re ready,” the Joker prompted.

Batman shook his head. “Commissioner Gordon, first,” he said. “I have to know that he’s alive.”

“Alive?” the Joker squealed. “He’s positively
jumping
with enthusiasm.” The Clown Prince of Crime retreated into the shadows and pressed a wall switch. Overhead machinery started to grind. And down from the catwalk shadows came Commissioner Gordon, bound to a wooden chair, his head encased in an upside-down jack-o’-lantern. Gordon struggled in his suspended seat, making the chain hoist rattle like a skeleton. The chair legs clicked as they touched down beside the Clown Prince of Crime.

“You offered truce conditions,” Batman said evenly.

“I give you my word you’ll be allowed to leave unmolested,” the Joker said. “If your performance is up to par. Ratings, you know.”

“Throw in Gordon,” Batman added. “Or no deal.”

“That wasn’t part of our bargain,” the Joker sniffed.

“It is now,” Batman said, his voice brittle. “Take it or leave it.”

The Joker’s eyes gleamed avidly. “And if I leave it?”

Batman gunned the Batmobile. It surged ahead, throwing the Joker’s henchman onto the oil-stained concrete. The Joker cowered behind Commissioner Gordon, his eyes for once wider than his ear-threatening grin.

The Batmobile screeched to a stop with mere inches to spare. Its knifelike ram nose severed Gordon’s leg bonds.

“You know this Batmobile is impregnable,” Batman said. “I don’t need your guarantee of safety. On the other hand, I
could
impale you to the wall.”

The Joker smacked Gordon’s pumpkin head. “Not without hurting the finest of Gotham’s finest, your friend.”

“You dare not harm him while I’m here—and you can’t hide behind him forever.”

“Hmmm,” the Joker mused, fingering his needlelike chin. “Tell you what. I’m a taxpayer, too. Why don’t I let our beloved commissioner walk away, and then we’ll roll tape?”

Batman nodded. The Joker removed Gordon’s pumpkin helmet and began untying his hands. Gordon stood up, rubbing his chafed wrists. He faced his antagonist.

“You—you vermin,” he sputtered.

“Moi?”
the Joker said archly.

“Gordon. Go. Now.” Batman ordered in a no-nonsense voice.

Fixing the Joker with a final hate-filled glare, Commissioner Gordon walked away. He didn’t look in Batman’s direction.

“And don’t even
think
of calling in your blue minions,” the Joker called after him. “Or the whole thing’s off.”

After Gordon had left, Jack and Punkin Head climbed back onto the Batmobile. Their video camera zoomed in like a glassy-eyed cyclops.

“Are you ready, you annoying rodent?” the Joker called.

Without a word, Batman unfastened his cowl. As the Joker, fascinated, crept closer, he lifted it slowly.

The cowl fell to his lap. The face that looked out from the Batmobile’s bulletproof dome was rough, the cheeks marred by tiny pockmarks, the nose bent from some ancient punishing blow. Batman patted unruly red locks back into place.

The Joker pressed his nose to the Plexiglas.

“No
wonder
you wear a mask,” he squeaked. “You have a face even
my
mother couldn’t love.”

Batman said nothing. His green eyes were unreadable.

“Get him from every angle, boys,” the Joker urged. “Don’t scrimp on his best side. You
do
have a best side, don’t you?”

“Yes. My dark side.”

“Good quote. I’ll use that. How do you feel, knowing that by this time tomorrow night, the entire population of Gotham City will be gaping at your naked puss on their TVs?”

“No comment.”

“Awww. I was hoping for something more . . . pungent.”

“All set, Joker,” Jack said.

“Okay, let’s get off the man’s car. He’s probably got a fortune sunk into the wax job.”

The Joker’s henchmen climbed off backwards, their cameras fixed on the Bat’s impassive rough-featured face.

“How about a shot of you defiantly driving off into the sunset?” the Joker taunted.

“This isn’t over yet,” Batman said, replacing his cowl. He threw the Batmobile into reverse and backed out into the road. The wheels squealed as it shifted into drive and fled into the night.

“Did you get it?” the Joker said frantically. “Did you get it?”

“I’m checking,” Punkin Head said, pulling a cassette from his camcorder. The Joker slapped it out of his hand. “Not that, you cretin! The overhead cameras.”

Dropping their equipment, the Joker’s henchmen went up into the catwalk maze. They opened concealed panels and pulled out heavy metal photographic plates. Down below, the Joker was going through stacks of drums, doing the same.

They made a pile of plates on the floor.

Regarding his booty, the Joker’s smile was like sick sunshine.

“Bring the van around,” he snapped suddenly. “I don’t trust that Gordon.”

The lights of the Batcave came on automatically, actuated when the Batmobile intercepted a photoelectric beam at the cave entrance. They illuminated a giant penny, a full-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex, and other strange trophies of past cases.

Batman parked the old-model Batmobile beside the compact version and popped the dome.

He climbed out, shrugging off his long cloak and draping it over a computer. The cowl came off next. Batman looked inside. Flesh-colored gunk stuck to the lining.

Seating himself before a black vanity table, he began peeling latex appliances from his face. Wire inserts were plucked from his distended nostrils. Then came the bushy red eyebrows and green contact lenses.

The rock-jawed face of Bruce Wayne began to emerge as Alfred descended from Wayne Manor.

“It went well, I trust?” he inquired.

“Yes, thank you, Alfred. Your makeup job was excellent.”

“I had a good foundation to work with,” Alfred said modestly.

“Find out for me Commissioner Gordon’s whereabouts. And be discreet, Alfred. I just want to know that he’s safe.”

“Of course, sir.”

Bruce Wayne reached into his hairline and lifted the red wig affixed to his slicked-back hair with spirit gum.

“The joke is on you, Joker,” he told his reflection. But he wasn’t smiling.