Batman 6 - The Dark Knight Read online

  “The card the Joker pinned to the murdered man’s body,” Ramirez said. “Forensics found three sets of DNA.”

  “Any matches?” Gordon asked.

  “All three. The DNA belongs to Judge Surillo, Harvey Dent, and Commissioner Loeb.”

  “The Joker’s telling us who he’s targeting. Get a unit to Surillo’s house, tell Wuertz to find Dent. Get them both into protective custody. Where’s the commissioner?”

  “City Hall.”

  “Seal the building. No one in or out till I get there.”

  Bruce Wayne’s party was in full swing. Most of the glittering crowd were visibly enjoying the food and drink, air-kissing casual acquaintances, gathering in knots of three or four chatting quietly or laughing. Bruce himself was on the terrace staring out at the lights of the city. Rachel Dawes passed through the French doors and joined him.

  “Harvey may not know you well enough to know when you’re making fun of him, but I do,” Rachel said.

  Bruce shook his head. “I meant every word.” He moved closer to Rachel and rested his hand lightly on her shoulder. “The day you told me about, the day when Gotham no longer needs Batman . . . it’s coming.”

  “You can’t ask me to wait for that,” Rachel whispered.

  Bruce grasped both of Rachel’s upper arms and stared down into her face, “It’s happening now. Harvey is that hero. He locked up half the city’s criminals, and he did it without wearing a mask. Gotham needs a hero with a face.”

  Harvey Dent moved through the glass doors and onto the terrace. His voice was jovial: “You can throw a party, Wayne, I’ll give you that. Thanks again. Mind if I borrow Rachel?”

  Rachel moved from Bruce to Dent and, with a single, swift backward glance, went inside.

  They threaded their way through the remaining partiers, pausing to shake a hand here, speak a word there, until they reached the kitchen. Dent stood leaning against a tall, stainless-steel refrigerator, and Rachel took a place across from him, her back to a butcher block.

  “You cannot leave me on my own with these people,” he said smiling, but with an edge in his voice.

  “The whole mob’s after you, and you’re worried about these guys,” Rachel said, her brows rising.

  “Compared to this, the mob doesn’t scare me. Although I will say . . . them gunning for you makes me see things clearly.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. It makes you think about what you couldn’t stand losing. And who you want to spend the rest of your life with.”

  “The rest of your life, huh? That’s a pretty big commitment.”

  “Not if the mob has their way.”

  “Harvey, that’s not funny.”

  “Okay, then let’s be serious. What’s your answer?”

  Rachel lifted her chin and stared at Dent’s face. “I don’t have an answer.”

  Downtown, at City Hall, James Gordon and a retinue of detectives jostled their way through a throng of reporters and cameramen and entered the office of Commissioner Perry Loeb.

  Loeb, behind his desk, looked up angrily. “Gordon, what are you playing at?”

  Gordon ignored him and checked the office windows. Then he turned to the detectives who had accompanied him, and said, “We’re secure. I want a floor-by-floor search of the entire building.” He watched the detectives file out and turned to Loeb. “I’m sorry, sir. We believe the Joker has made a threat against your life.”

  “Gordon, you’re unlikely to discover this for yourself, so take my word for it—the police commissioner earns a lot of threats.” Loeb took a decanter half-full of amber liquid and a crystal tumbler from a drawer. “You get to explain to my wife why I’m late for dinner.”

  “Sir,” Gordon said a bit too loudly, “the Joker card had a trace of your DNA on it—”

  “How’d they get my DNA?” Loeb demanded.

  “Somebody with access to your house or office must’ve lifted a tissue or a glass . . .”

  Gordon stopped, then took two swift steps to the desk, reaching for the glass that Loeb was draining.

  “Wait!” Gordon shouted.

  But Loeb had already dropped the tumbler, spilling the liquid onto the wooden desktop which began to smoke as Loeb grabbed his throat. He made a few gurgling sounds and within seconds he was dead.

  Two heavyset men in gray suits left a blue sedan illegally parked and ran up the steps of a brownstone in Gotham Heights, a neighborhood with a reputation for bohemian that hadn’t been deserved for fifty years. Judge Surillo, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, opened the door and listened as the two detectives explained why she needed protection.

  “Gordon wants me to go right now?” the judge asked.

  “Right now,” said the first detective. “Don’t bother to pack.”

  “These are dangerous people,” said the second detective. “Even we don’t know where you’re going.” He handed Surillo a sealed envelope. “This’ll tell you where you’re headed.”

  Judge Surillo, flanked by the two officers, both of whom scanned the adjoining houses and the street and were holding their pistols, went to the curb and helped the judge into the car.

  “Now, let’s see,” Surillo said, opening the envelope with a forefinger. She pulled out a sheet of paper with a single word printed on it: UP.

  Orange flame gouted from the car as it was lifted off the pavement by the force of the explosion.

  There was no longer anything festive about Bruce Wayne’s fund-raiser. For several minutes, the guests had been answering their cell phones or reading text messages, and their smiles were vanishing, replaced by expressions of anxiety. But no one left. Apparently they believed that there was safety in numbers.

  Alfred turned on the massive flat screen television and tuned it to a cable news channel. The anchorman confirmed what the partygoers already knew.

  Bruce got out his cell phone and speed-dialed a number. He stepped into a spare bedroom, spoke his name and listened, then asked, “Surillo and Loeb?”

  Meanwhile the door of the private elevator slid open, and the Joker stepped out, holding a shotgun and followed by several other armed men.

  “Good evening,” the Joker said, racking a shell into the gun’s firing chamber. “We’re the entertainment.”

  Rachel and Dent weren’t aware of what was happening a few feet away in the living room, nor, apparently, of anything in the world except each other. They had barely moved in the five minutes since Rachel had not accepted Dent’s proposal,

  Dent sighed, and said, finally, “I guess no answer isn’t ‘no.’ ”

  “I’m sorry, Harvey. I just—”

  “It’s someone else, isn’t it? Just tell me it’s not Wayne. The guy’s a complete—”

  Bruce stepped silently from behind the refrigerator. Rachel’s eyes widened. She opened her mouth to say something, but Bruce was already using his fingers to press three spots on Dent’s skull. Dent slumped over, and Bruce caught him.

  “What are you doing?” Rachel finally managed to ask.

  “They’ve come for him,” Bruce replied, and now there was nothing of the playboy in his manner.

  Bruce put Dent in a pantry closet and shoved a broom through the handles.

  “Stay hidden,” he told Rachel, and left the kitchen.

  In the corridor outside, he met one of the Joker’s thugs, who pointed a shotgun at him. Bruce wrested the weapon away from the gunman and flipped it around and hit the man with it. He fieldstripped it as he moved away, scattering the pieces.

  Rachel waited only a few seconds before disobeying Bruce’s order. She was not the kind of woman to remain in hiding when she might be able to do something. She hurried into the living room and stopped, staring at the Joker, who was sauntering among the guests.

  “I have just one question,” the Joker said. “Where is Harvey Dent? No answer. All righty, I’ll settle for his loved ones. Any lovey-wuveys on the scene?” He looked directly at Rachel. “Hello, beautiful. You must be Harvey’s squeez
e, no?” He pulled a knife from under his jacket and tiptoed to Rachel’s side. She stood rigid, eyes straight ahead, ignoring him. He ran his knife across her cheek. “And you are beautiful. You look nervous. It’s the scars, isn’t it? Wanna know how I got them? I had a wife, beautiful like you. Who tells me I worry too much. Who says I need to smile more. Who gambles. And gets in deep with the sharks. One day they carve her face, and we’ve got no money for surgeries. She can’t take it. I just want to see her smile again. I just want her to know that I don’t care about the scars. So I put a razor in my mouth and do this to myself . . . And you know what? She can’t stand the sight of me. She leaves. See, now I see the funny side. Now I’m always smiling.”

  Muted sounds were coming from his throat, and his face was contorted, but the scars made it impossible to know whether he was laughing or crying.

  Bruce made his way into the master bedroom, but stopped short when he saw a couple hastily dressing themselves after enjoying each other on his bed. The couple looked embarrassed, but the man summoned enough courage to ask Bruce what was going on in the living room.

  Bruce ignored him and instead walked into a closet and pulled at a false wall. As he stepped into the safe room, the female half of the couple moved swiftly toward him.

  “Thank God, you’ve got a panic room!”

  Her only reply from Bruce was the safe-room door slamming shut in her face and sealing.

  Back in the living room, the Joker raised the knife from Rachel’s cheek. She slugged him.

  “A little fight in you,” the Joker said, beaming. “I like that.”

  “Then you’re going to love me,” Batman said from behind him.

  The Joker whirled and ran into Batman’s fist. The knife fell to the floor, and Batman kicked it away, then spun to face two of the Joker’s thugs. He pivoted on his left leg and kicked them both with his right in one continuous, sweeping motion.

  The Joker tapped one ankle with the toe of the opposite foot and a blade sprung from the front of his shoe. His leg levered upward, stiffly, and the blade slid between the plates of Batman’s body armor. Ignoring the wound, Batman lifted the Joker overhead and flung him across the room. There were two of the Joker’s crew left standing, and both were rushing at him. He waited until they were barely a foot away before grabbing their heads and banging them together.

  “Looky looky looky,” the Joker sang. He had another knife pressed to Rachel’s neck and held a shotgun in his other hand.

  “Let her go,” Batman said.

  “Sure. Just take off your mask and show us all who you are . . .”

  Rachel shook her head: No!

  The Joker aimed the shotgun and blasted away the nearest windowpane. He dragged Rachel to the windowsill and nudged her over. Only the Joker’s arm around her neck kept her from falling.

  “Let her go,” Batman repeated.

  The Joker cackled. “Very poor choice of words.”

  He flung wide his arm and Rachel fell.

  Batman straight-armed the Joker aside and dived out the window after Rachel.

  She had hit a sloped glass roof belonging to the apartment below and was sliding toward the edge, her fingers unable to get purchase on the glass. Batman dove right behind her and fired his grapple, snagging Rachel’s ankle as they pitched over the edge and began hurtling toward the dark street. Batman tried to get his cape stiffened so that they could glide to the street below, but only half of the cape responded. Batman grimaced and wrapped his arms around Rachel and twisted in midair so he would land first and his armor would cushion them both. They landed hard atop a taxi, rolled to the pavement, and continued rolling until they reached the sidewalk, where Batman got unsteadily to his feet, helping Rachel up as well. She was out-of breath and very pale, but she gave him a smile of thanks.

  Batman and Rachel stood almost completely hidden under a shop awning and watched a black SUV speed away. Almost certainly the Joker’s getaway car . . .

  “Are you all right?” Batman whispered.

  Rachel said, “Let’s not do that again, all right? What about Harvey—”

  “He’s safe.”

  “Thank you.”

  In the backseat of the SUV, the Joker was alternately gasping for breath and laughing. He touched a streamlet of blood running down his makeup-smeared chin with a forefinger, licked it, and said, “Yummy! Did you see that? Did you love it a great big bunch? I tossed the lovely bird into the wind and out Bats went. I wonder . . . would the Bats take a header for everyone? Or is that pretty little birdie someone special? Either way, we know one thing for sure now . . . Batman will always try to save the innocent. And that will be his downfall!”

  “What about Dent?” the driver asked.

  “Oh, I’m a man of my word,” the Joker said, smiling.

  Alfred inspected Bruce’s body and found it intact. A back muscle was pulled, Bruce’s left wrist sprained, but by and large he had survived the plunge from the penthouse to the street unscathed.

  “Tell me,” Alfred said. “When you dived out that window, did you have a plan?”

  “If I’d stopped to plan, both Rachel and I would be dead. I didn’t have time to do anything but act, and hope my reactions would be the right ones. I had to trust to the moment. It’s something Rā’s al Ghūl taught me.”

  “Just how trustworthy is the moment?”

  Bruce laughed. “Not very. A random negative factor—a gust of wind, say—and you’d be planning my funeral.”

  “You seem to feel that this sort of thing might get you killed.”

  “This sort of thing will get me killed, sooner or later, if things keep going the way they are . . .”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was midafternoon at Gordon’s office, where nobody was happy. Gordon was behind his desk talking to a stout man with bushy gray sideburns named Gerard Stephens.

  “Jim, it’s over!” Stephens insisted.

  Gordon shook his head wearily. “As long as they don’t get to Lau, we’ve cut off their funds.”

  “But the prosecution’s over! No one’s standing up in front of a judge while judges and police commissioners are getting blown away.”

  “What about Dent?”

  “If he’s got any sense, Dent’s halfway to Mexico by now.”

  The door behind Stephens slammed open, and Harvey Dent strode in.

  “So where do you keep your trash?” he demanded.

  Ten minutes later, Dent and two uniformed officers entered a cell deep in Gotham Central Jail, where Lau sat on the edge of a cot.

  Dent tossed a bulletproof vest at Lau. “You’re due in court. I need you alive long enough to get you on record.”

  “No way,” Lau said, laying the vest aside. “You can’t protect me. You can’t even protect yourselves.”

  Dent picked up the vest and threw it at Lau. “Refuse to cooperate on the stand, and you won’t be coming back here. You’ll go to county. How long do you calculate you’ll last in there?”

  Bruce Wayne sat in his underground lair staring at the bank of television screens. He was aware of two sets of memories, one superimposed on the other: saving a good woman, a brave and valuable woman, and years earlier using similar skills to save a man who wished to exterminate 90 percent of the world’s population. What nagged at him was that he felt the same satisfaction at both rescues—saving Rachel and saving Rā’s. Was there really no difference?

  He heard the elevator groan to a halt behind him, and a few moments later, Alfred joined him. Bruce switched on the video equipment, and together they watched the Joker footage. Occasionally, Bruce would magnify, make louder, mute, or remove color from elements of the images, but he could get no further information from them.

  He turned to Alfred. “Targeting me—Batman—won’t get their money back. I knew the mob wouldn’t go down without a fight, but this is different. They’ve crossed a line.”

  “You crossed it first, Master Bruce. You’ve hammered them, squeezed them to the point of d
esperation. And now, in their desperation, they’ve turned to a man they don’t fully understand.”

  “Criminals aren’t complicated, Alfred. We just have to figure out what he’s after.”

  “Respectfully, Master Bruce . . . perhaps this is a man you don’t understand either.”

  Bruce rose and went to the nearest closet.

  “Allow me to bore you with a story,” Alfred said. “I was in Burma. A long time ago. My friends and I were working for the local government officials. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders, bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. We were asked to take care of the problem, so we started looking for the stones. But after six months, we couldn’t find anyone who had traded with the outlaw.”

  “What were you missing?”

  “One day I found a child playing with a ruby as big as a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing the stones away.”

  “So why was he stealing them?”

  “Because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money . . . they can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

  Bruce nodded and reached into a cabinet to get one of his Batman suits.

  “Where to tonight, Master Bruce? The opera? An ice-cream social, perhaps?”

  Bruce was snapping armor into place. “I think I’ll sniff around the city . . . or maybe the top of the city.”

  Ten minutes later, Batman stood atop a skyscraper, listening.

  At this early hour of the morning, the neighborhood around Eighth and Orchard, in what had once been the city’s retail center, was all but deserted. James Gordon had no trouble racing his unmarked sedan down the narrow streets, leading three patrol cars whose sirens were howling. Gordon braked to a screeching halt at the intersection and before his engine had stopped growling, he and Ramirez were racing into a tenement building, weapons out, followed by six uniformed cops. Gordon kicked open the door to apartment four. He holstered his gun. He was in a cramped kitchen with a bathtub partly covered by a shower curtain against one bare brick wall. In the center of the room, two dead men sat at a table covered with oilcloth. Each was holding five cards, all jokers, and each was disfigured by crude leers carved into their faces. Both had driver’s licenses pinned to their shirts.