Batman 6 - The Dark Knight Read online

  CHAPTER TWO

  With Batman came baggage. Most of it Bruce carried deep within himself, in the form of regrets, unanswered questions, and memories. During his pilgrimage from rich kid to vigilante, he’d gone many places, done many things, a lot of them ugly, one or two perhaps unforgivable. But he’d succeeded in what he wanted to accomplish; he’d learned, and equipped himself. He had been considering returning to Gotham City when a betrayal and a few other unforeseen circumstances put him in a filthy hole of a prison. There, he’d been offered a chance at freedom, and when he took it he found himself in yet another prison—a monastery, high in the Himalayas, where he became the acolyte of the most dangerous, and perhaps the most charismatic, man he had ever known.

  Rā’s al Ghūl. A man who hid both his brilliance and his malevolence behind another’s identity until it pleased him to reveal himself. Bruce sometimes wondered if Rā’s concealing himself behind another identity somehow lodged in his subconscious and, when the time came, prompted him to adopt a similar strategy.

  Even now, Bruce could not decide whether Rā’s was truly insane. Bruce knew that, by his own reckoning, Rā’s was an altruist, a savior who would restore social and, more importantly, environmental order to a stricken planet. He would do this by means that would make Vlad the Impaler seem like a Sunday school teacher. He would eliminate most of the human beings on the Earth, and force the rest to live according to strict rules.

  Rā’s tolerated no disobedience, as Bruce learned when he ordered Bruce to execute a farmer who was guilty of theft. Bruce had refused, and in fleeing had set the monastery ablaze.

  But before he had made his way down the mountain, he had stopped to rescue his mentor. That had been a mistake. Rā’s had followed him to Gotham City and initiated a scheme to drive everyone there into hallucinating madness, and had partly succeeded.

  You sometimes see them around town, Bruce thought. The ones I couldn’t save. The ones the doctors gave up on. Hollow-eyed, unaware of their surroundings . . . And those are the fortunate ones. The others . . . they’re behind walls. They’re fed, and sheltered, and clothed, and they scream and scream . . .

  It all came to an end on a train speeding toward the center of the city, when student and mentor confronted each other a final time

  Some Gothamites, confused by conflicting reports, thought that the bat-man had caused the crash, others regarded him as a hero, and still others, perhaps the majority, doubted his existence.

  When Alfred Pennyworth carried a tray of toast and coffee into Bruce Wayne’s bedroom area, he found it empty, though the bed had been slept in—not always the case where Alfred’s employer was concerned. He went down a long, empty corridor. Twice he had to flatten himself against a wall and inch past cartons that were still unpacked and were in the way. They had occupied this penthouse for less than a month and there was still work to do before Alfred could pronounce it livable.

  Bruce Wayne was in an empty area performing one of the strange, dancelike routines Alfred knew was called a kata, and whose purpose was to train in Asian martial arts.

  “Something Rā’s al Ghūl taught you?” Alfred asked.

  Bruce finished his exercise before answering: leapt and kicked simultaneously, and landed lightly on the balls of his feet. “Nope,” he said. “Korean master. Last I heard, he was living in the Changansan mountains.

  “Does this resumption of martial-arts practice indicate that you plan further nocturnal forays?”

  “Not necessarily. I’m used to being in shape. Makes me feel good. I tried just sitting around yesterday, and it gave me the crawlies.” Bruce looked at the tray. “That for me?”

  Alfred nodded and put the tray on a windowsill. Bruce poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “May I assume,” Alfred asked, “that you’re done with . . . busting heads?”

  Bruce sipped his coffee. “I prefer to use the term ‘vigorous persuasion.’ What you’re really asking is, am I done with Batman? I’ve given it a lot of thought these past few days and . . . no, I’m not.”

  “Rā’s al Ghūl is dead.”

  “But there are others, close to home, who are just as dangerous. The job isn’t done. For openers, there’s the Maroni thing, the Rossi thing . . . I’m far from done . . .”

  Alfred sighed. “I suppose I should begin to shop for some new equipment.”

  “For here? No, this room isn’t nearly big enough. No room in the penthouse is.”

  “May I remind you that the cave beneath the mansion is . . .”

  “. . . Temporarily inaccessible, yes,” finished Bruce. “That’s something that has a high priority. What I have in mind will take a lot of hard work. You can expect a whopping Christmas bonus this year.”

  “Splendid. In the meantime, if you insist on continuing your nocturnal exploits, what will you do for a headquarters? You can hardly wear the cape and mask and pass the doorman downstairs without being noticed.”

  “I think I’ve got that covered. I’ll show you the place this afternoon. With a little elbow grease, we should be able to transform it into a bunker of sorts.”

  “My life,” Alfred said, “becomes fuller and fuller.”

  Bruce finished his coffee as Alfred carried the empty tray to the kitchen.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was what most of Gotham’s citizens thought was a typical afternoon in the life of Bruce Wayne, playboy. A quick stop at a gallery opening, where he ignored the photographs on display but managed to get the phone number of the pretty receptionist. Lunch at a hip downtown bistro. A dash out to the country club, where he decided not to play golf but instead chased the female employees around with his clubs.

  A trip back to central Gotham, waving at passersby from the window of his steel gray Lamborghini Murcielago.

  Bruce drove the Lamborghini into the basement garage of the tall building he currently lived in, managed to knock over a Vespa scooter on the way to his parking slot, paid the Vespa’s owner twice what it would cost to replace it, stashed the Lamborghini next to the other Wayne vehicle, a Rolls-Royce, and rode the private elevator to his penthouse. There, he found that Alfred had company. He and Rachel Dawes were perched on stools in the kitchen, facing each other across a marble countertop, clutching mugs of what Bruce was sure was tea, deep in conversation. Both looked at him when he entered, and he called out a greeting.

  “What brings you uptown?” he asked Rachel. “Or do you come downtown . . . I can never remember where that office of yours is.”

  “Uptown, as you well know.”

  “I thought you’d be busy . . . middle of a weekday and all.”

  “The case I was trying was plea bargained. No court time needed.”

  “Tell me . . . is that good or bad? This law stuff . . . so confusing.”

  “You don’t have to do your act with me, Bruce. In fact, I wish you wouldn’t. It annoys me.”

  “Sorry,” Bruce said.

  “I hope so.”

  “What are you and Alfred up to?”

  “I came to see you.”

  “Okay. Shall we go into the living room?”

  “Here is fine.”

  “More tea?” Alfred asked.

  “That would be nice,” Rachel said. Alfred refilled Rachel’s cup and poured one for Bruce, then excused himself.

  Bruce looked at Rachel across the counter. She had aged, but no one could complain about that. She had always been cute; now she was, by any reasonable criterion, beautiful. Beautiful and strong, and ferocious, compassionate, and brave.

  “What you’re doing is wrong,” she said.

  “Wrecking sports cars? Dating debutantes? What exactly . . .”

  “Please, Bruce. No masquerade, not with me.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “There’s something else. I’d like you to abandon your other masquerade.”

  “Which one would that be?”

  “The Batman.”

  Bruce hesitated and sipped tea, then set down the
mug. “Okay. What’s your objection to . . . my new life?”

  “I think you’ve begun to enjoy it. Too much. Oh, I’m sure you’ve constructed an elaborate rationalization—you’re saving Gotham, et cetera et cetera et cetera . . . I’m afraid that sooner or later you’ll become addicted to it, and that will cause you to cross the line.”

  “You’re afraid I’ll kill someone.”

  “Or cause someone to die . . . what you’d call ‘collateral damage.’ And you’ll rationalize, tell yourself that it was necessary, it couldn’t be helped, you were only following the dictates of the moment . . . Does that sound familiar to you?”

  “No. Should it?”

  “You should read history books. Then you might recognize some of the excuses war criminals offer.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “You’ll try to be careful, at least at first. But you’ll be creating situations that you won’t be able to control, situations in which people panic. I deal with cops and crooks all day, every day. I know what can happen to a person.”

  “With all due humility . . . I’m not just any person.”

  “You’re richer than most. You’re also incredibly intelligent, athletic, handsome, determined, motivated. But you swim in the same gene pool as we lesser mortals. You’re fallible, and you’re going to fail and someone will die. Then you’ll either destroy yourself with remorse or become a homicidal sociopath. I don’t know which would be worse.”

  “Sometimes violence is necessary.”

  “Yes. To save your life or someone else’s life. But not as policy—you’re proposing to use violence to solve enormously complex problems, and when has that ever worked? And it’s been tried, oh, has it been tried! Remember the old definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

  “Rachel, I promise you . . . I won’t go off the deep end.”

  “I think you will.”

  “You know how much I respect your opinion, but this time, you’re wrong.”

  “We’ll see, then won’t we?”

  “I guess we will.”

  Alfred was feeling a bit guilty. He shouldn’t have been listening to the private conversation, but if information passed between those two . . . he had to know what it was. And now he did, and now he was disturbed because he shared Rachel’s misgivings. He wasn’t as alarmed as she obviously was, but . . . he tended Bruce Wayne’s wounds, always trying to joke about them to lighten the moment, and he’d observed the subtle changes in Bruce since his return from his adventures abroad and his time with Rā’s al Ghūl. Of course, Bruce was no longer the bright, charming child he’d been when he and Alfred met and, people did change as they age; perhaps the traits Alfred was observing were simply the result of Bruce getting older. But he still couldn’t help being bothered.

  When she got up to leave, he escorted Rachel to the door, told her that he would see her soon, and went to see how Bruce was enjoying his tea.

  The Joker saw the bus, about a block away, and—was this great or what?—an old lady waiting near the curb. It would be a matter of perfect timing, but the Joker loved that kind of challenge. He stood directly behind the old lady. The bus came closer, closer, just a few feet away . . .

  The Joker let it pass.

  Then he tapped the old lady on the shoulder and handed her a hundred-dollar bill.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Midafternoon, Friday, downtown Gotham City. North Julius Street, on the edge of the financial district. Noise and confusion. Blaring horns and rumbling engines and sunlight glaring on thousands of panes of glass. A thin blue haze of exhaust fumes hanging in the air.

  Above it all, on the fourteenth floor of a skyscraper still under construction, two men wearing clown masks, with weapons and tools strapped to their bodies, were standing in a vacant loft facing a ten-foot-tall window. The first of the men, whose code name was Dopey, aimed upward, fired a silenced automatic pistol at the glass, and watched shards of it fall to the floor. The second man, code named Happy, stepped to the now empty window frame and lifted what looked like a spear gun to his shoulder, aimed, squeezed the trigger, and a hook trailing a length of cable, hissed across the street and buried itself in the wall of another building. Dopey secured his end of the cable to a naked I-beam and nodded to his partner. Happy hooked a bag to the cable and sent it across the emptiness. A moment later, Happy and Dopey followed the bag, dangling from wheeled devices that fit over the line. If anyone happened to look up and see them . . . Hey, this is Gotham City, whack-job central. Just another pair of loonies doing something loony, and if it’s interesting, maybe it’ll be on the eleven o’clock news . . .

  Below, and three blocks away, a black SUV with dark-tinted windows and out-of-state license plates sped between two school buses and jerked to a stop at an intersection. The front passenger door opened, and a tall man wearing coveralls dashed from a doorway and climbed into the vehicle. Once inside, he pulled a clown mask from his pocket, pulled it on, and turned in his seat to face another clown, code named Bozo, in the driver’s seat. “Three of a kind. Let’s do this,” he said, now going by the name Grumpy.

  The man in the backseat, code named Chuckles, looked up from loading a compact submachine gun, and said, “That’s it? Three guys?”

  Grumpy said, “There are two on the roof. Every guy is an extra share. Five shares is plenty.”

  Chuckles said, “Six shares. Don’t forget the guy who planned the job.”

  Grumpy said, “Yeah? If he thinks he can sit it out and still take a slice then I get why they call him the Joker.”

  On the rooftop, Dopey and Happy pried open an access panel. Happy paused and stared at Dopey. “Why do they call him the Joker?”

  “I heard it’s ’cause he wears makeup,” Chuckles said, pulling out a thick bundle of blue CAT5 cables. “To scare people. War paint.”

  Back on the street, Bozo guided the SUV to a metered parking spot in front of the bank. He switched off the engine and, without bothering to feed the meter, went into the bank. Grumpy, Bozo, and Chuckles carried assault rifles; they carried several empty duffel bags as well. Once inside, Grumpy fired a burst into the ceiling as Chuckles hit the security guard on the head with the butt of his weapon, and Bozo closed the door and lowered the blinds.

  Grumpy fired another burst, and yelled, “Everybody down on the floor—now!” Customers and employees alike dropped to their hands and knees, then to their bellies. One of the senior tellers managed to press a silent-alarm button as she went down. Fifteen floors above her, on the roof, Dopey stared down at a palm-sized electronic device and heard a faint ping.

  “What’s that?” Happy asked.

  “Here comes the silent alarm, just like we figured,” Dopey said. “And there it goes. Funny thing is, it didn’t dial out to the cops. It was trying to reach a private number.”

  Behind him, Happy raised his gun and fired his silenced automatic into the back of Dopey’s head. As Dopey slumped to the roof dead, Happy picked up his bag. He took from it an old-fashioned crowbar and went to work on the roof access door. In less than a minute, he had it wrenched open and was running down a steep flight of steps, lit only by red bulbs on each landing. When he reached the bottom, he opened a door marked EXIT and was standing in front of a shiny steel vault.

  In the bank proper, Bozo and Grumpy were moving down a line of customers and tellers, who stood along one wall. Bozo handed each a hand grenade and Grumpy followed, pulling the pins. The hostages gripped the grenades in both hands, holding the tops to prevent the grenades from exploding.

  “We don’t want you doing anything with your hands other than holding on for dear life,” Grumpy told the hostages.

  Then there was a loud bang and the third robber, Chuckles, fell backward, his mask and the front of his jacket shredded, dead.

  The bank manager, wearing an impeccably tailored brown suit and holding a shotgun, stepped from his office and fired again. The hostages, clutching their grenad
es, scurried along the floor seeking cover. Grumpy and Bozo both fired blindly in the general direction of the manager with the shotgun as they dived behind a desk.

  “What’s he got, a five-shot?” Grumpy asked.

  Bozo nodded.

  “He’s got three left?”

  Bozo raised two fingers.

  Grumpy edged his gun around the corner of the desk and squeezed off a single shot. The bank manager fired twice. Grumpy looked at Bozo, who nodded.

  Grumpy stood and aimed his gun over the desktop. The bank manager fired again and a hail of buckshot clipped Grumpy’s shoulder. He fell behind the desk and the manager moved forward, pulling fresh shells from his pocket. Bozo stood from behind the desk and shot the manager in the chest.

  Grumpy had pulled aside the flaps of his shirt and jacket over the place where the buckshot had struck him and was peering down at his wound. He rubbed some blood away with the palm of his hand and looked more closely. The damage was only superficial.

  Leaning on the desk, he stood and turned to Bozo. “Where’d you learn to count?”

  Bozo ignored him and started loading fresh shells into his shotgun.

  “You have any idea who you’re stealing from?” the bank manager whispered. “You and your friends are dead.”

  Happy clamped a drill to the vault and pressed a button. With a high whine, the drill blade bit into the metal and—

  He found himself on the floor, dazed and shaking. It took him a few moments to realize that he’d been hit by electricity, a lot of electricity. They wired the vault?

  He pulled his sneakers off, put them on his hands and, bracing himself on a wall, approached the vault once more. With a lot of fumbling and repositioning, he was able to operate the drill, the sneakers protecting him from the high voltage.