Batman 6 - The Dark Knight Read online

  Grumpy entered the chamber from a side door. Happy glanced at him, and said, “They wired this thing up with—I dunno, maybe five thousand volts. What kind of bank does that?”

  “A mob bank,” Grumpy said. “I guess the Joker’s as crazy as they say.”

  Happy shrugged. The noise of the drill changed from a whine to a grinding sound. “We’re almost home,” Happy said.

  He grabbed the large wheel and spun it.

  “Where’s the alarm guy?” Grumpy asked.

  The wheel stopped spinning. Happy pulled on it, and the vault swung open. “Boss told me that when the guy was done I should take him out. One less share.”

  “Funny,” Grumpy said. “He told me something similar.”

  Happy grabbed for the pistol shoved into his belt at the small of his back as he whirled to face Grumpy, but he was too late. Grumpy fired a burst from his assault rifle and, after a moment, stepped over Happy’s body and into the vault.

  He stopped and stared at the mountain of cash at least eight feet tall.

  Ten minutes later, he emerged into the bank burdened by several bulging duffel bags. He dropped them at Bozo’s feet and laughed.

  “C’mon,” he said. “There’s a lot to carry.”

  The hostages, clutching their grenades, watched as the robbers disappeared into the vault. Some of them glanced nervously at their neighbors, others stared at nothing in particular, while still others had their eyes squeezed shut, their lips moving silently.

  Grumpy and Bozo reappeared, each burdened with several stuffed duffel bags. Grumpy dropped his bags onto the floor next to the first batch and said, “If this guy was so smart, he would have had us bring a bigger car.”

  Then he jammed his pistol into Bozo’s back and took his weapon. “I’m betting the Joker told you to kill me soon as we loaded the cash.”

  Bozo shook his head. “No. I kill the bus driver.”

  “Bus driver? What bus—”

  Bozo glanced at the nearest window and jumped back. The rear end of a yellow school bus smashed through the window, sending a shower of glass into the room and slamming Grumpy into the tellers’ cage. Bozo snatched up Grumpy’s fallen weapon and turned to face the bus. Another clown opened the bus’s rear door, and Bozo shot him dead.

  Sirens began to wail in the distance.

  Bozo began loading the duffel bags into the bus.

  The bank manager still lay where he’d fallen, his right hand splayed over his wound, his head raised to stare at Bozo. “Think you’re smart, huh?” he wheezed. “Well, the guy who hired you’ll just do the same to you. Sure he will. Criminals in this town used to believe in things.”

  Bozo stepped over to where the man lay and crouched beside him.

  The man stared up at Bozo. “Honor. Respect. What do you beli—”

  Bozo jammed a grenade with a purple thread knotted around the pin into the man’s mouth.

  “I believe,” Bozo said, “that what doesn’t kill you—”

  Bozo yanked off his mask. The manager’s eyes widened. He was looking at another clown face, one far more disturbing than any of the masks: white skin, green hair, a mouth horribly scarred beneath a red slash of makeup.

  “—simply makes you stranger,” the Joker concluded.

  The scarred clown rose and strolled toward the bus, the thread attached to the grenade unraveling from the purple lining of his jacket. He climbed into the bus and shut the rear door, trapping the purple thread.

  A moment later, the bus engine grumbled, and the bus jerked over the sidewalk and into the street.

  The purple thread yanked the pin from the grenade in the bank manager’s mouth.

  Hostages screamed.

  The grenade hissed and began spewing red smoke, but it did not explode.

  A block away, a line of school buses left the curb in front of the Ferguson Middle School and edged into the traffic stream. A final bus, which came from the direction of the bank, joined them as five police cars, sirens screaming, sped past them on the opposite side of the street.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Chechen sipped fine wine, looked across the dance floor at a fine woman, and listened to music which was not fine, but popular here in his new country, the United States of America.

  Some said he was lucky, this native of Chechnya, very lucky indeed not to be dead or eating moldy bread in some godforsaken prison cell. The Chechen knew luck had nothing to do with it. He was tough, he was as smart as he had to be, and he did not care about anyone or anything except his own well-being, and that made him invulnerable.

  He was just a boy when Chechnya broke away from Russia in the early 90s, nothing but fuzz on his cheeks, but already he knew opportunity when he saw it, already he was realizing that the chaos that gripped his small nation could be turned to his advantage. So he got some guns, a lot of guns, abandoned by fleeing Russian troops, and the guns enabled him to get followers, and the followers and the guns together enabled him to get more guns and more followers . . . For a while, he was one of the most feared and powerful men in his region, and by then he had something more than fuzz on his cheeks, but not much more. In the United States, he would not have been able to vote yet; in his country, he was a dominator. He was sure that nothing could stop him. But something did. The damned Russian army—that stopped him. The Communists were gone, or temporarily in hiding, but the politicians and generals—were they about to let tiny Chechnya make a mockery of the mother country? No. And so tiny Chechnya was reinvaded, and this time, the Russians were victorious.

  That was fine with him. Russians the bosses? Deal with them. Not selling them guns and rockets, perhaps—they seemed to have plenty of guns and rockets. But there were other things. Drugs? Yes, people always wanted drugs, and as long as the authorities were so stupid as to outlaw drugs, money could be made from them.

  By now, he despised the name he was born with because it reminded him of his parents, a pair of weaklings, a pair of fools who deserved the squalor they lived in, but he was not good at things requiring imagination, things such as thinking of a new name. Boris? Too Russian. Peter? Too Christian. In the end, he told people to call him “the Chechen.”

  He went into the business of supplying drugs to Russian troops, both officers and enlisted men but mostly officers because they had more money. Then something happened. He never learned exactly what it was, but one night, sitting in the rear seat of his car as one of his hirelings delivered cocaine to a major general, he saw police emerge from a van and storm into the major general’s quarters. There were shots. Police cars blocked both ends of the street. The windshield of the Chechen’s car shattered and his driver’s head fell back, a widening splotch of blood on his forehead. The Chechen got a machine pistol from under the seat, rolled out the car door and, bent over, staying low, ran for a narrow passageway between two houses. He heard yelling and footfalls behind him. When he reached the end of the passageway, he turned around and sprayed bullets at the policemen who were chasing him. There were four of them and they all fell, and he ran again. He found a culvert beneath a roadway and squeezed into it, gasping, spit running down his chin.

  He waited and listened. There was the distant rumble of traffic, but no footfalls, no sirens. He stayed in the culvert for an hour, waiting, listening. Finally, he climbed out and hiked to a place he knew near an airfield. He used the cash in his pockets to obtain use of a computer and the computer to access bank accounts in the Bahamas. He used that cash to bribe and obtain a private aircraft, and within a week he was comfortably ensconced in a luxury hotel in Mexico City. The Russians, he was pretty sure, would not seek him in Mexico, and by the time they realized that he might have gone there, he would have vanished again.

  What next? He liked the drug trade, liked feeling superior to the weaklings who were his customers, liked the money. And he was close to the United States. But where in the United States? New York, Chicago, Miami, both ends of California, St. Louis—it would be difficult to establish himself
in places like those because businessmen such as he already had both monopolies and small armies of enforcers, and his own army was gone, its members either dead or behind bars. But this Gotham City he had heard of? From what he already knew and was able to learn through telephone calls, Gotham City had been a paradise of corruption and a marketplace for his kind of goods. The rumor was, the situation in Gotham was even worse than usual. Something big had happened, something nobody could quite explain: escaped maniacs, exploding manholes, a commuter train that crashed into a street and burst into flames, ordinary citizens rampaging, insane . . . and a giant bat that was part human. That last, the bat—it had to be something made up, perhaps to sell newspapers. The Chechen did not believe in human bats. But the rest was true, at least most of it. There were pictures and eyewitness accounts. The whole story could be a hoax, perpetrated by the government, but the Chechen did not think so, because there was no profit to be made from such lies.

  If the television reporters were to be believed, the situation in Gotham City had improved, but it was still largely chaos. Perhaps it was like his country after the Russians had fled? That would be made to order for him. That would be perfect.

  The man to see, the boss of bosses, was named Salvatore Maroni. The Chechen would have to deal with him. But first, he would have to prove himself. He found an enclave of refugees from his part of the world in a small city near Gotham, called Blüdhaven, armed them and led them in a successful raid on the biggest local dealer. News media called the event a “massacre,” and for once, the label was accurate. No survivors, and a row of storefronts in downtown Blüdhaven in flames. The Chechen now owned the Blüdhaven drug trade. Maroni did what he would have done, and got in touch. Discussions were held, deals made, and in the end, Sal Maroni and the Chechen were co-operators, and virtually every junkie in both Blüdhaven and Gotham City were clients.

  The Chechen had always planned to kill Maroni as soon as it was convenient, but he found that their informal partnership was useful. As the Americans would say, they had each other’s back. Perhaps later, when he understood America better, the Chechen would kill Maroni, but for the time being, and for the foreseeable future, they were allies. Maroni introduced him to others of what the press called “the underworld” and, again, deals were made and everyone profited.

  The Chechen bought himself a nice house in a Gotham suburb, one with a high fence and living quarters for his bodyguards and large, luxurious kennels for his dogs. The rottweilers were the animals he favored, big and nasty and ferocious, like himself. Next, he sought recreation. None of the nightspots were to his liking, nothing like the clubs he’d seen in old Hollywood movies, except for the one owned by Maroni, and the Chechen didn’t want to get too close to his partner because . . . well, perhaps Maroni planned to kill him—it was surely possible—and if he allowed himself to be distracted by the pleasures of a nightclub, the killing would be easy, and that was to say nothing of poison in the food and drink. The Chechen’s solution was the obvious one, a nightclub of his own, and it proved to be an excellent solution.

  His nightclub was where he preferred to do business, surrounded by his rottweilers, bodyguards, and lady friends, and it was in his nightclub that he met with a small time dealer named Burton. It was a Tuesday night, not a big night in the nightclub business; there was only one couple on the dance floor, a man with white hair and a woman who looked to be in her late teens, and no one at the bar. Burton came in with his two bodyguards who took up stations opposite the Chechen’s bodyguards and the two sets of men glared at each other, hands near the lapels of their jackets, while their bosses sat in a circular banquette upholstered in rhinoceros hide and conferred.

  Burton had news: he had discovered a new source of product he felt the Chechen should know about. A highly trained man with doctorates in both chemistry and medicine who was able to synthesize a product that would put the average user into orbit.

  “This man has name?” the Chechen asked.

  “Most people do,” Burton said. “This guy has two. The one he was born with is Jonathan Crane—”

  “Sounds like sissy,” the Chechen said.

  “—but the one he likes to use is the Scarecrow.”

  “Sounds like sissy at costume party. Why we can trust him?”

  “He has this little problem with the cops. They’d like to hang his ass on a flagpole. You maybe heard about what happened in Gotham last year? Lotta people going nuts? Crane was part’a the reason. Nobody knows all that happened, but Crane was in on it. We give him a place to work, a cut of the profit, he delivers us the goods, and we don’t haveta worry about foreign suppliers. Nice little domestic operation. Good for us, good for America.”

  “You vouch for him?”

  “I ain’t gonna go that far. What I’m saying is, he’s a solution to a problem. He stops being a solution, he ain’t bulletproof, know what I’m saying? You in or out?”

  “In. What you need from me?”

  “Right now, money. A couple days, I’ll call, set up a meet with you and Crane.”

  “Deal.” The Chechen leaned back and almost smiled. “You hungry? Thirsty? You want drink? Food—steak?”

  “In your place? Do you think I’m crazy?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rupert Casterbaugh was what some people, the charitable ones, would have once called a “remittance man.” Others, less charitable, might have used words like “wastrel,” “lay about,” “worthless waste of protoplasm.” He had no job, no relationships, no prospects and, truth to tell, no idea how he landed in Gotham City. But land there he did, in a studio apartment in an expensive building. This gave him a fixed address, a place for his mother to send a monthly check that paid the rent on the studio and Rupert’s other, quite modest, living expenses, and his single major need, the stuff he absolutely could not live without: drugs. Rupert Casterbaugh was an addict—a junkie, to the uncharitable and a “bright young man with a problem” to his mother—and he could and did easily blow a hundred thousand a year feeding his habit.

  He was nice. Polite, well-spoken, even funny. The few women who drifted in and out of his life found him sad and in profound psychological pain, but they couldn’t help him, and neither could the platoon of therapists his mother employed from time to time. So he wandered from city to city, country to country, befogged and lonely and not caring. Gotham City? Why not? It was as good a place as any, and a man he’d met in Tangiers had set him up with a supplier, which meant that Rupert would not lack for life’s necessities once there.

  The first meeting between merchant and customer was the usual—furtive and fast. But the drug, whatever it was—a white powder—the drug was way better than anything he’d ever tried, and he didn’t know why. A lot of his drug use was about, at first, killing pain and later about simply quelling the need. But this . . . It was always impossible to convey to lucky nonaddicts—and he admitted that they were lucky—why putting the liquid into a vein or sniffing the powder or puffing the pipe was happy-making. But this . . . he couldn’t explain it even to himself!

  When the high was done, he became worried that something that powerful must have damaged his body somehow. But he could detect no new problems. He’d been undernourished for years, and pale, and a bit yellowish in certain light, and he still had all those symptoms. But no new ones. Oh, he desperately wanted some more of the white powder, but after a high, he always wanted and needed more. Maybe the wanting and the need were a bit more intense, but hey . . . small price to pay, right?

  The second transaction was better than the first—more civilized, more friendly. The merchant came to Rupert’s apartment: no meetings on dark street corners, parks, bars. No, a call from the doorman, a doorbell ring, and in came a pleasant-looking fellow in his early 30s who introduced himself as Crane. They shook hands and Crane asked if he might trouble Rupert for a glass of water. Water was all Rupert could supply because, as usual, his pantries and refrigerator were empty, but that was okay—water was all Cra
ne wanted, really.

  Rupert handed Crane a wad of bills, which Crane did not bother to count—classy!—and received in return a baggie with a few ounces of white powder visible through the plastic.

  “Try it,” Crane suggested.

  Rupert snorted directly from the bag . . . and looked up to see Crane with a crude burlap mask over his head.

  Why was he screaming? And why was Crane putting tape over his mouth?

  He slid over an edge, and drowning or burning or being torn apart would be better than this namelessness and no no no no no no no no no . . .

  Rupert was dead. Crane used a cell phone to call for help in removing the body. “I want to examine it more closely,” he told somebody.

  The so-called authorities would have said that Jonathan Crane wasn’t qualified to conduct an autopsy since his license had been revoked after his activities as the Scarecrow became known. He knew this because the information appeared in the last paragraph of a story in the Gotham Times about the chaos in Gotham City that ended, somehow, when a commuter train car exploded. Crane had fled Arkham Asylum by then. He was in hiding and not, himself, at all certain what had happened after he’d been thwarted by that insane meddler in the bat costume; that was why he was bothering to read news reports.

  Crane wondered exactly where he would examine Rupert’s body and, more particularly, Rupert’s brain. It would have to be a place with plenty of light and . . . yes, plenty of running water. Autopsies could be messy. If he were still in residence at Arkham, he would have no problem. Although the asylum was, in most ways, a bit old-fashioned, even Gothic, someone somewhere along the way had equipped it with a first-rate morgue.

  That morgue was just one of the reasons Crane had found a home at Arkham. He’d found the institution’s relaxed attitude toward the silly rules of ethical practice congenial, not like his previous place of employment. Not that rules didn’t have their place, but they were for those of limited intellect who needed them, and Jonathan Crane did not need them because he had known from an early age that his intellect was anything but limited. He was a visionary. He was a genius. To hamper him in any way was to do a disservice to mankind.