Batman 6 - The Dark Knight (7 page)

T
here were few people around the Major Crimes Unit headquarters tonight. Most of the on-duty crew were at the site of the afternoon’s bank heist, and the rest were scattered throughout the boroughs investigating the odd homicide, a kidnapping or two, a few serious robberies. Only two cops were here, in the main bullpen: a twenty-year vet named Wuertz and relative newcomer Anna Ramirez.

Detective Ramirez was the duty officer, charged with taking calls and directing them to wherever they should go. She checked herself in a full-length mirror: She nodded, satisfied, and switched on the office television. She turned to the all-news channel and sat down in a chair near a bank of telephones.

Mike Engel, a local hotshot reporter, was on the screen, giving the mayor hell.

“Mister Mayor,” Engel was saying, “you were elected on a campaign to clean up the city . . . When are you going to start?”

The mayor rubbed his lapel between a thumb and forefinger and said, “Well, Mike—”

Engel ignored him. “Like this so-called Batman—a lot of people say he’s doing some good, that criminals are running scared. But I say he’s not! What kind of hero needs to wear a mask? You don’t let vigilantes run around
breaking the law
! Where does it end? Yet we hear rumors that instead of trying to arrest him, the cops are using him to do their dirty work.”

“I’m told our men in the Major Crimes Unit are close to an arrest . . .”

Ramirez turned her eyes from the television and called to Wuertz, who was squinting at a sheet of yellow paper. “Hey, the mayor says you’re closing in on the Batman.”

Wuertz looked at her in distaste. “The investigation is ongoing.”

He crumpled the yellow paper and tossed it at a cork-board on the nearest wall. The corkboard bore a strip of cardboard on which was lettered:
BATMAN SUSPECTS
. Below it were several pictures: Abraham Lincoln, Elvis, and the Abominable Snowman.

“Sure it is,” Ramirez said, getting up and crossing to where a coffeepot perched atop a burner. She poured coffee into a plastic cup and went to a flight of stairs that led to the roof.

She found Lieutenant Gordon standing beside the newly installed searchlight that stabbed a beam of brightness into the sky above them. On misty nights, a bat silhouette on the searchlight’s lens could be projected onto clouds, but, misty or not, the beam was always visible from anywhere in the city.

Ramirez handed the coffee to Gordon and asked, “Ever intend to see your wife again, Lieutenant?”

Gordon grunted and sipped the coffee. “How’s your mother?”

“They checked her back into the hospital.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Least there she’s got someone round the clock. Unlike your wife.” Ramirez pointed her chin at the searchlight. “He hasn’t shown?”

“No. But I like reminding everyone he’s out there.”

“Why wouldn’t he come? You think he doesn’t know this thing is for him?”

“Oh, he figured that out in a second. No . . . hopefully, he isn’t here because he’s busy.”

B
ruce Wayne wasn’t the only person in Greater Gotham dressing up as the Batman that night—wasn’t even one of two or three.

Brian Douglas still had his gym clothes on and was just about to have a shower and hit the sheets when he got the call from that weird guy, Anton-something, the guy who had organized the . . . Brian wasn’t sure what it was. He thought of it as the “Batman Club.” Two or three guys who stayed in touch and met occasionally for some vigilante action. Lonely guys, and angry guys—angry for good reason: all of them had suffered, in one way or another, from Gotham City’s lawlessness. Douglas himself was an ex-cop who had gotten tired of the corruption and inaction in the police force and had decided to take matters into his own hands. According to this Anton, he had a second cousin who worked in a parking garage near the manufacturing district and he, the second cousin, happened to overhear two guys talking. The one with the thick Russian accent—at least Jimmy’s cousin
thought
it was Russian and was sure it wasn’t Spanish—told the other about a drug deal that was going down that night, in about an hour, in fact.

He hung up the phone and hauled his makeshift Batman suit out of the closet and put it on, then figured it wouldn’t be too smart to wear a mask on the streets of Gotham this late at night. The mask with the pointy ears went into a coat pocket, then he reached for his shotgun. Checking it was loaded, he tucked it into his bulky coat and headed outside.

He got on his motorcycle, a Japanese model twenty-five years out of the showroom, and on the fifth try got the engine to kick over. Somebody from a window yelled at him to shut the damn thing off, but that was Gotham for you, people always complaining about something.

As he neared the parking garage Anton had told him about on the phone, he could see the two others in Batsuits walking purposefully toward their common destination. He parked his bike on the sidewalk—at this hour, nobody would care—and joined his fellow Batmen.

The Chechen and his bodyguards got into his black SUV. While one of the men drove through the busy center of the city and into the industrial section, the Chechen and his other employees chatted. Someone mentioned the Batman, and the Chechen snorted.

“Fairy tales for little girls!”

Batman gazed through a tinted windshield and waited.

His Tumbler was parked on the roof across a narrow alleyway from a multifloored parking garage. During daylight hours, it would be jammed with cars and pickup trucks belonging to workers at the nearby storage facilities, but now, after dark, it was empty, as were the streets surrounding it. The Chechen and an unknown supplier of the drugs the Chechen peddled were to meet on the garage roof to do business. The Chechen went to considerable trouble to conceal his itinerary, and for a month he had succeeded. But eventually, patience, persistence, and no small amount of money had given Batman the knowledge he sought. It had taken him here.

He saw movement on the garage rooftop.

Two black SUVs were turning off the up ramp. They stopped near the only other vehicle on the floor, a battered white van. Several men, all of them bulky, all of them dressed in ill-fitting suits, emerged from the SUVs. The bulkiest of them looked out over the rooftops and suggested that there might be a night watchman on the premises.

The Chechen shrugged, and said in Russian, “That’s why we bring the dogs.”

He opened the back door of the nearest SUV, and three enormous rottweilers sprang out, their claws clicking on the concrete floor. The Chechen knelt, and the dogs licked his face. He spoke again in Russian: “My little princes . . .” He looked up at the others. “The Batman’s invisible to you fools, but my little princes . . . they can find human meat in complete darkness.”

He left the dogs and went to the second SUV. He opened the back door and dragged out a filthy man wearing rags.

“No!” he squealed. “No, get ’em off me! Off me!”

The Chechen dragged his prisoner to the white van. The van’s side door slid open, and two newcomers dressed in coveralls emerged, carrying metal kegs, guns strapped to their backs.

In heavily accented English, the Chechen said, “Look! Look what your drugs did to my customers.”

From inside the van: “Buyer beware.”

A tall, thin figure wearing a wrinkled blue suit and a burlap mask emerged from the van. “I told your man my compound would take you places. I never said they’d be places you
wanted
to go . . .”

“My business is
repeat
customers,” the Chechen said.

“If you don’t like what I have to offer, buy from someone else,” the Scarecrow said. “Assuming Batman left anyone else to buy from.”

Both of the dogs began barking in unison.

The barking grew louder.

“Come on out sonofbitch, whoever you are,” the Chechen shouted, gazing around. “My dogs are hungry.”

Suddenly a rising Batman silhouette appeared from around the corner. There was the roar of a shotgun and a ragged, round hole appeared in the SUV, inches from the Chechen.

More guns roared.

“Loose the dogs!” the Chechen screamed.

When nobody immediately obeyed him, the Chechen knelt by the rottweilers and snapped the leashes free from their collars. The dogs raced into the darkness. From an alcove leading to an elevator, a figure wearing a mask and cape stumbled toward the down ramp. One of the dogs leapt at him and closed its teeth and jaws on the Batman’s neck.

The Scarecrow climbed into the driver’s seat of the pellet-pocked van and stopped; the barrel of a shotgun was pressing into the back of his head. A mask with pointed ears was visible in the rearview mirror. The Scarecrow groped between the seats and lifted an aerosol can. He fingered a button, and a cloud of spray filled the van. The masked man dropped his shotgun and rolled, screaming, out the door. He lay crying at the Chechen’s feet.

The Scarecrow stuck his head out, and said to the Chechen, “Not the real Batman.”

“How you know?”

“We’re old friends, the Batman and I.”

“The other one ain’t real either, I bet,” a bodyguard said.

The Chechen kicked the whimpering man on the floor and was drawing back his foot to kick again when he stopped, startled by a loud crashing sound as four large wheels smashed down onto the concrete in front of him, dust and floor spraying everywhere.

“That’s more like it!” said the Scarecrow.

Batman knew he had to be quick and effective and try not to hurt anyone too severely, especially not the fools in the costumes, whoever they were.

One of those fools stood nearby, lining up his shotgun on a fleeing bodyguard. Batman grabbed the weapon barrel and bent it upward as the faux Batman looked into the face of the red deal. He stumbled backward as Batman opened his hand to reveal a pneumatic mangle hidden in his palm.

He bore down on a pair of rottweilers mauling another costumed fool. Batman lifted his arm and drew a grappling gun. A monofilament shot out and wrapped around the fake Batman’s ankle, and Batman pulled him away from the dogs.

Now the animals.

A rottweiler was already in the air, leaping at Batman’s throat. Batman kicked it in the belly, and the dog fell away, whimpering. The second dog closed its jaws on Batman’s gauntlet, but the Kevlar armor proved impenetrable. Batman swung the animal over his head and it fell to the concrete, whimpering.

While Batman had been busy with the rottweilers and the imposter Batmen, he saw Scarecrow climb into a van. He jumped aside as the van sped toward him. Then, as it passed, he put his fist through the driver’s window. His armored knuckles grazed the Scarecrow’s mask. Startled, the Scarecrow leaned away, unintentionally twisting the wheel. He righted it just in time to avoid smashing into a retaining wall, and the van skidded onto the exit ramp and began to descend it.

Batman sprang to the edge of the ramp and waited, staring down at the corkscrew-shaped ramp. If he went after the Scarecrow, the others might have time to run. If he didn’t, the Scarecrow would certainly lose himself in the dark streets.
Six of one, half a dozen of the other . .
. But the Scarecrow was the known evil. Batman made his decision.