Batman 6 - The Dark Knight Read online

  Perhaps old enough to have committed the crimes himself? It was an avenue worth pursuing. But that was not easily done. Any case more than ten years old was more than cold, it was frigid, hard to solve with every advantage even a modern police system can offer. And Gotham’s was not a modern police system. There had been recent improvements, largely financed by the Wayne Foundation and implemented by James Gordon, but only information from the last year was reliably in the brand-new computer’s database. Before that . . . Bruce knew of a ramshackle warehouse in South Gotham full of cardboard boxes, tens of thousands of them, stuffed with documents and even physical evidence relating to crimes committed as long as a half century earlier. Should Bruce Wayne request a guided tour? But why would fun-loving Bruce be interested in such serious antiques? That would be completely out of character for him and might start people wondering. Bruce remembered the lessons of his criminal mentor. He’d spent several years being taught by Ducard without ever once suspecting that Ducard was, in fact, Rā’s al Ghūl. Lesson: If you’re going to wear a mask, be sure it fits well.

  Okay, Bruce was out. That left Batman.

  It was ridiculously easy to break into the storage facility. It was on an old street paved with crumbling brick and virtually unlit. There was only one car, a twenty-year-old Chevrolet, parked near the building and that, Batman guessed, was the watchman’s ride. One watchman? Not necessarily. He could have given a ride to colleagues. Maybe other watchmen came by public transportation? Not likely. There were no buses that ran in this neighborhood after six, and taxi fare would be too costly.

  Okay, one for sure, and maybe more.

  Batman went around to the rear of the facility, found a broken window and . . . why not? Why do this the hard way? Batman entered through the window and began to prowl. He heard the tinny sound of a cheap television set coming from somewhere near the front of the first floor—no doubt the watchman, doing whatever he had to do to get through eight hours of tedium.

  After an hour, Batman gave up. There was no system, no order here, just a vast jumble of boxes containing, probably, millions of items. There was also a lot of water damage—the sky was visible through holes in the roof—and a lot of rodent activity.

  Batman exited through the broken window, slid through the shadows as he’d been taught to do until he reached the Tumbler, parked a mile away in the shadows. He considered his next move as he knew he would find nothing useful about Harvey Dent in the public records. Was anyone involved in the death of Dent’s parents still alive and able to be questioned? Maybe Gordon could help.

  He could, and did. Bruce had called him at home the next day, using the rough growl that was Batman’s voice, and asked about the old case. Gordon knew of a detective who had worked on the case, retired just a few years, living in a fishing shack in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. A man by the name of Al Grooms. The question was, how to approach Al Grooms? As Bruce Wayne? No—again, questioning Grooms is not something rich kid Bruce would do. Batman, then? He didn’t want to scare—or challenge—Grooms, so maybe Batman wasn’t such a good idea, either. Okay, a third choice.

  Bruce reached Grooms by telephone and made a date to meet him the following Saturday. So, early Friday morning, Bruce donned a red wig, added a red moustache, adopted an aggressive strut very different from the walk of either Wayne or Batman, and drove the Lamborghini to New York. He spent a night at a motel and met Al Grooms at a coffee shop the next morning.

  Grooms was a burly man, gone a bit round, dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt. In his day, he must have been tough and frightening. Bruce introduced himself as Charles Malone, a freelance journalist doing an article on Harvey Dent. At first, Grooms seemed reluctant to talk. Then, suddenly, it was as though a dam burst and the words poured out of him. Yeah, he remembered the Dent case. They wanted to pin it on the kid, him and the other officers working the case, but the kid, Harvey, really was at that damn drugstore all night, and they couldn’t get enough to hold him, even in those days, when justice in Gotham was pretty much touch-and-go, or maybe lucky’d be a better word. Now, Harvey’s old man was a perfect son of a bitch, worst cop on the force, and there was no shortage of skels’d like to put him down, and maybe a couple of decent citizens, too, but the truth was, he done the old lady, then he done himself, and good riddance to the both of them.

  None of which answered the question of why they had gotten together.

  Bruce thanked Al Grooms, paid for his lunch, gave the counterman an extra twenty to pay for Al’s dinner, then drove south. By evening, he was having tea with Alfred.

  He told Alfred about the meeting of Charles Malone and Al Grooms.

  “Have you decided that Mr. Dent is the paragon he seems to be?” Alfred asked.

  “No. There has to be something wrong with him.”

  “Perhaps what’s wrong with him is that he seems to have captured the affections of Miss Dawes.”

  “I won’t dignify that with a reply. Anything happen here while I was away?”

  Bruce exhausted every possibility in investigating Harvey Dent: interviews—usually as Charles Malone—with teachers, classmates, old girlfriends, recent girlfriends, fellow prosecutors, defense lawyers, even convicts. He checked Dent’s school transcripts as far back as junior high. He checked bar association documents. Nothing. Harvey Dent wasn’t a saint, but he was a person of enormous integrity, courage, and ability.

  Then he concentrated on Dent himself. For weeks, although he didn’t know it, Harvey Dent had an unseen guardian angel. Batman followed him to and from his office, as well as the various courtrooms Dent frequented. Bruce Wayne, pretending to be interested in a female defendant, watched Dent conduct a major trial, and disguised as Charles Malone, watched Dent conduct several minor trials. All successfully, all with the utmost reticence. Finally, on a rainy Friday evening, Bruce saw Dent meet Rachel in the lobby of her apartment building. She kissed Dent quickly but deeply on the lips, and Bruce realized that they were on another date.

  Then he had an epiphany: I’m jealous! Upset and angry and . . . jealous.

  He was in no condition to conduct surveillance and . . . Harvey Dent didn’t need surveilling. Harvey Dent was exactly what he seemed to be, and what that was was a thoroughly admirable human being and, just possibly, the savior of Gotham City.

  “I give up,” he told Alfred. “I was wrong. The guy is a paragon. A much better man than I.”

  “Care to elaborate, Master Bruce?”

  “He and I were dealt the same rotten hand. Parents dead through violence. But I had advantages . . . I had you and Rachel and now Lucius. I had a huge house and every option in the world. My financial resources were virtually unlimited.”

  “May I remind you that not everyone who pretended to be your friend was.”

  “You mean Earle? Yeah, he was a bad one, and there were a few others. But suppose they’d succeeded in getting my family’s companies away from me? Do you think I’d’ve found myself begging for quarters on street corners? No, I’d’ve still lived very comfortably. By now, I’d be married to Rachel, and we’d have three kids and be deliriously happy.”

  “You can’t be certain of that.”

  “No, but believe me, I wish I could. Well, maybe not the three kids part, but the rest—yes! It could have happened. Now look at Dent . . . as I said, same bad deal. Dead parents just like mine. No, wrong—not just like mine because I know what happened! It was tragic and ugly and pointless, but something like that occurs every day in every big city on Earth. There’s really nothing mysterious about it. But Harvey . . . he’ll go to his grave without being able to answer the biggest question in his life. And that’s not the worst of it. I dug into his parents’ finances. Know how much his mother had in the bank when she died? A hundred and fourteen dollars. Even back then, that was a pittance. His father was flat broke. He had nothing more than the few dollars in his pocket. No bank accounts. Months behind on his rent. Harvey had no resources at all, yet look what he accomplished.
High school, college, law school, all on his own. Between studying and jobs, he couldn’t have gotten more than four hours’ sleep a night for years. But he persevered, and he achieved everything he set out to do.”

  “And now he wants to clean up Gotham City.”

  “Not just clean it up, Alfred. Remake it. Create a real Camelot.”

  “Small wonder Ms. Dawes is attracted to him.”

  “Rachel is Dent’s one failure. This thing between them . . . it isn’t real.”

  “No?”

  “I know Rachel. She’s . . . biding time. Waiting for the right person.”

  “And that would be?”

  Bruce shrugged.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Harvey Dent became the flavor of the week. The story in the Times was picked up by other papers, including some from other nearby states The three local magazines did pieces on Dent, which prompted the big television stations to pay attention. The Harvey Dent story was featured on all the cable news outlets and even merited a thirty-second spot on two of the networks’ evening news shows. Every report mentioned the usual kinds of stuff, Dent’s law-school career, his uprooting of corrupt cops and, of course, the biggie—his courtroom heroics after Rossi pulled his ceramic gun, caught by a spectator with a camera phone who made enough selling the image to pay for her daughter’s Ivy League education. And they all showed pictures of the Dent visage; the racket-busting DA looked even better on television than he did in person.

  One of the more prominent talking heads ended his nightly cablecast by staring into the camera, radiating his usual steely sincerity, and telling the nation: “We’re sick of it, aren’t we? You know what I’m talking about. The stink that’s been coming from the corridors of power for years, from the domed havens of the panderers and pimps, from the courts, the cop houses, the capitals, and the Long Shore mansions. It reeks, and I want to puke, and I’m betting you do, too. The people of Gotham City—I know they want to puke, because plenty of them have told me so. They’re so desperate, those Gothamites, that they adopted a hero. Did I say hero? What I mean is, buffoon. I mean, ask yourself, what kind of man dresses up in a funny suit and a mask? Yeah, you got it—a buffoon! But now, hey—take a look. Gotham’s got itself a new hero, and this one’s the genuine article. No cape and pointy ears on this guy. He wears a suit and tie, and he’s plenty smart in the book sense of smart, but he can handle himself on his feet, too. A creep named Rossi learned that the hard way when he pulled a gun made of some sort of Silly Putty and got his clock cleaned by a sweet right cross. And who threw that kayoer? The man I’ve been talking about, Gotham City’s real knight in shining armor, District Attorney Harry Dent. Fly away, batty boy, Dent’s gonna get the job done.”

  The following night, the talking head apologized for calling Harvey “Harry,” but the apology wasn’t really necessary. Everyone who saw the show and could possibly care knew who he meant, and a lot of people agreed with him.

  Alfred Pennyworth did not agree, but his boss did.

  “I think the only buffoon involved here is the one making the noise,” Alfred said.

  “I think there’s a lot in what he says,” Bruce said.

  Alfred waited for Bruce to elaborate, and when that didn’t happen, excused himself to attend to household chores.

  Harvey Dent didn’t agree with the talking heads either. He didn’t express his reservations publicly and, in fact, cooperated with the media’s veneration of him. He didn’t accept invitations to fly to New York, Chicago, Atlanta, or Los Angeles to be interviewed face-to-face, but he did allow a few camera crews into his office and apartment, and twice traveled to local studios for remote interviews being conducted by people hundreds of miles away.

  Driving away from one of those, he confided to Rachel, who was at the wheel, “They’re wrong about Batman . . . at least, I think they are.”

  “Want to tell my why?” Rachel asked.

  “From my new vantage point, my new job, I can see the limitations of what I do. Rachel, the corruption in this town is so deep, so pervasive . . . it’s in the air we breathe. And I can’t beat it. There are places I can’t go, things I can’t do. I’m like a surgeon who’s only allowed to cut skin deep. I’ll never get to the cause of the problem.”

  “You believe in the law . . .”

  “Yes! Yes, I do. But I’ve come to see that it has limitations. First, we need to rid ourselves of the corruption, because as long as we’re corrupt, the law can’t function. When the evil’s gone . . . then the law takes over, restores order, creates the climate in which civilization can flourish. But not until the evil’s gone.”

  “I’ve never heard you use the word ‘evil’ before.”

  “Dammit, that’s what it is. I’m sick of euphemisms. Evil I said, and evil I meant, and we have to cleanse ourselves of it.”

  “How does Batman come into this?”

  “As a partner, I hope. I said there’s a limit to what I can do, operating on my side of the law. The same is true for him. We have to work together, Batman and I.”

  “You want him to be your shadow?”

  “Exactly. A good way to put it—my shadow. He goes where I can’t, he does what I shouldn’t. Using what he gives me, I go into court and do what he can’t. Together, we clean up Gotham.”

  “Suppose you do? What happens to Batman when you’re finished?”

  “Good question. I wish I had a good answer. I’d like to believe he’ll survive, maybe just go away and never be seen or heard from again. But we all take our chances.”

  Rachel was silent for the rest of the drive.

  The neighborhood around the Thomasina Arms had once been what the newspaper columnists of the day called “swanky.” But that was years ago. Now, it had deteriorated to a welter of shabby rooming houses, cheap bars—a region of darkness, not least because every one of the streetlamps had been shattered, either by bullets or rocks. The Thomasina Arms—the “Tommy,” as locals called it—had gone from being the home-away-from-home of visiting dignitaries to a single-occupancy hotel frequented mostly by dreary individuals who did not want to be seen any more than was necessary.

  But it did have metal detectors, and some of the burly men lounging in the lobby had bulges under their jackets. The Chechen and another man moved through the detector under the impassive gazes of two Chinese with pistols shoved into their belts.

  The Chechen turned to the man beside him. “You Gambol? From east side?”

  “Yeah,” Gambol replied. They went to a shadowy flight of stairs and trudged up to a kitchen on the second floor.

  Inside, there was a small table, its surface scratched and discolored. Around it sat an ethnically mixed array of middle-aged men, most of them wearing expensive suits. Two Chinese, who could have been twins of the pair at the metal detector, brought in a television set, put it on the table, plugged it in.

  “The hell is this?” Gambol demanded.

  The television screen flickered, brightened, then everyone was staring at the face of Mr. Lau. Several of the men around the table rose from their chairs, muttering complaints.

  “Gentlemen, please,” Lau said, his voice pitched low, barely audible. The men who had risen resumed sitting, and Lau continued: “As you’re all aware, one of our deposits was stolen. A relatively small amount—68 million.”

  “Who stupid enough to steal from us?” the Chechen yelled.

  “I’m told the man who arranged the heist calls himself the Joker.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  Sal Maroni, who had been sitting with a surly expression on his face, said, “Two-bit whack job wears a cheap suit and makeup. He’s not the problem—he’s a nobody. The problem is our money being tracked by the cops.”

  Lau said, “Thanks to Mr. Maroni’s well-placed sources, we know that police have indeed identified our banks using marked bills and are planning to seize your funds today.”

  Everyone in the room began to shout.

  The Chechen’s voice wa
s loudest: “You promise safe, clean money launder.”

  Lau waited for the noise to abate. Then he said, “With the investigation ongoing, none of you can risk hanging on to your own proceeds. And since the enthusiastic new DA has put all my competitors out of business, I am your only option.”

  “So what are you proposing?” Maroni asked.

  “Moving all deposits to one secure location. Not a bank.”

  “Where, then?”

  “Obviously, no one can know but me. If the police were to gain leverage over one of you, everyone’s money would be at stake.”

  “What will stop them from getting to you?” the Chechen demanded.

  “As the money is moved, I go to Hong Kong. Far from Dent’s jurisdiction. And the Chinese will not extradite one of their own.”

  It started as a giggle and grew to a chuckle, then the Joker stepped from an adjoining room, his laughter becoming a shriek.

  He stopped laughing, and said, “I thought I told the bad jokes.”

  “Give me one reason I shouldn’t have my boy here”—Gambol indicated a bodyguard with a jerk of his thumb—“pull your head off.”

  The Joker took a freshly sharpened pencil from his hip pocket and placed it, eraser down, on the table. “How about a magic trick?” he asked brightly. “I’ll make this pencil disappear.”

  Maroni’s thug lunged. The Joker sidestepped, gripped the back of the thug’s head, and slammed it down onto the pencil. The thug’s body went limp and slid to the floor.

  The pencil was gone.

  “Magic,” the Joker declared. “And by the way, the suit wasn’t cheap. You should know. You bought it.”

  “Sit,” the Chechen said to the Joker. “I wanna hear deal.”