Batman (23 page)

One reporter on the scene at the casino tried to follow Batman, but didn’t have the horsepower to keep up. Based on Internet reports, however, he’s left the Batmobile and has disappeared over a rooftop. We’re appealing for anyone who’s in the Burnley area to look out your windows and, if you catch sight of Batman, take a photo and send it to us right away.

Pretty please?

Citizen journalism!

What’s Batman up to?

Best photos get tickets to Jack’s show!

Given the timing, he may be on the heels of the assassin who may or may not be Deadshot, depending on who you ask. Some reports are saying Deathstroke, and still others are claiming that it’s a new villain on the scene looking to step in where the Joker left off.

A new villain. Just what Gotham City needs.

We’ll continue to vet all these stories as they come in, and when we have one that meets the
Ryder Report’s
standards of evidence, we’ll get it right out to you. In the meantime…

Look out your windows and, if you catch sight of Batman, take a photo and send it to us right away.

Can you do that for us?

00:12:58

Commissioner Gordon and some of his officers were on standby, waiting for Batman to hand them whatever villainous flotsam he found, so when Batman called Gordon from the street in front of the casino, he didn’t need to wait for long before they arrived.

“The Mad Hatter’s inside, on the balcony,” he said as Gordon climbed out of the lead car.

“Just standing there, or is there something else you want to add?”

“He won’t resist you—he’s too far gone,” Batman said. “Also, watch out on the floor. Even though the Mad Hatter’s not a threat right now, he’s got a group of brainwashed flunkies brandishing knives.”

“We’ll take care of them,” Gordon said. He motioned, and SWAT teams started to deploy from two personnel carriers that had parked across the street.

“Some of them will need medical attention,” Batman noted as the preparations were being made. He worried that Gordon might go in with a heavier hand than was required, perhaps to prove that he had the situation under
his
control.

“I said we’ll take care of them,” Gordon said firmly, tossing him a look. “You just find the Riddler.” He looked around. “Where’s Robin?”

“He’s still finding his way out. Where’s Pierre Ouellette?”

Gordon took off his glasses and rubbed his nose.

“We talked about this,” he said. “Ouellette is safe, and he’s going to stay right where he is until—”

“Commissioner, with all due respect, do you think Pierre Ouellette is safe when you know there was a mole inside your force?” He regretted having to say that, but he couldn’t see any other way forward. Before, Gordon had been protecting Ouellette and playing the odds. Now there were no odds. The man was Deadshot’s next target, and Gordon was stopping Batman from confronting the assassin.

Gordon looked at Batman, his jaw tight and eyes burning. “Don’t tell me how to do my job,” he said.

Batman bit back a sharp reply as uniformed officers led by SWAT teams crashed through the casino’s front door. There was a thud, and shortly following it the unmistakable tang of tear gas wafting through the broken entry.

The problem
, Batman thought,
isn’t that I’m telling Gordon how to do his job. It’s that he’s too prickly and too defensive to get out of my way.
That was ingrained cop behavior. They were taught to be suspicious when operating with other agencies—or individuals. If someone else closed the case and caught the perpetrators, it didn’t look good in the press, and it didn’t sit well when budget time came around.

“No, I won’t tell you how to do what you do,” he said as the stutter of automatic weapons fire echoed from inside. A news helicopter circled overhead, and at least two reporters were watching his conversation with Gordon. “What I
am
telling you is that we’re less than ten minutes from the counter hitting zero again.

“You need to trust me.”

Gordon deliberated for a long moment.

The timer ticked down.

He gave Batman an address.

* * *

That’s the last favor we’ll get from Gordon, at least for a while
, Batman thought as he gunned the Batmobile away from the casino.
If it
was
a favor. It might have been an act of self-preservation.

After all, if Batman went after Deadshot, and didn’t get him, Gordon retained the moral high ground. He had shared important information, and it wasn’t his fault if Batman came up short.

He couldn’t blame Gordon for a maneuver like that—not really. He had a department to run and city politics with which to deal. Batman didn’t have to factor such things into his decision-making processes.

He answered to the people of Gotham City.

* * *

00:04:07

He parked the Batmobile on a quiet side street in the Burnley neighborhood, not far from the new Gotham City police headquarters. He was a block from the address Gordon had given him. In this part of Gotham City, citizens went about their business unaffected by the plots of the Riddler and Gotham City’s other malevolent underworld figures… at least most of the time.

The streets were clean and the brownstones well kept. Most of them had small front gardens, and the cars parked on the street were nicer than in other parts of the city. These were the people who mistrusted Batman the most, because they were most isolated from the everyday degradations of crime and poverty. But he protected them all the same.

He slipped down an alley and climbed a fire escape running up the back of an old warehouse that was being converted into lofts. The safe house was located in the building next door, on the fifth floor facing the alley. Batman paused in the shadows, looking over the area, observing every detail. There was nothing out of order, but if Deadshot was involved, he might be set up in a sniper position blocks away. He scanned the rooftops that had a line of sight on the safe house’s single window, but didn’t see anything more unusual than rows of pigeons. That was good. If someone was on one of those rooftops, the pigeons wouldn’t stick around.

“One minute,”
Oracle said in his ear.

Batman’s intent had been to intercept Deadshot, or whoever the Riddler’s assassin might be, but time was short, and he saw no one to intercept. So he took a different approach.

He waited, perched on the fire-escape railing.

Forty-five seconds.

Thirty.

Fifteen… Ten.

At five seconds he launched himself from the railing and crashed through the window into the safe house. It was a studio apartment. There was a small kitchen area with an island counter and a futon doubling as a bed. On the futon sat Pierre Ouellette, eyes wide and terrified, staring up at a figure who was standing over him.

With a pistol leveled at his head.

* * *

Deadshot hadn’t changed since the last time Batman had seen him. Same red-lensed monocle, same pseudo-military clothing, same wrist-mounted guns, even the same stubble.

“Hey, the Riddler said you might drop by,” he said.

“What’s the matter, Deadshot?” Batman responded. “Don’t trust your marksmanship anymore, so you have to work up close?”

“Please,” Ouellette moaned. “Don’t kill me. I didn’t do anyth—”

Deadshot smacked him with the butt of his gun.

“You shut up.” Looking at Batman, he said, “You want to joke with me? I still owe you, pal. You made me miss that reporter, whatsisname, Ryder. Now I have to listen to that guy yammering on the radio twenty-four seven, and if I wasn’t nuts before, that would be enough to do the trick.”

“Everyone’s got excuses,” Batman said. “Only the weak use them.”

“Okay, Doc,” Deadshot said.

“What’s with the handgun? Why not the ones you’ve already got strapped to your arm?”

“Calling card,” Deadshot said with a shrug. “Special ammo.”

“Like the initials?”

“Hey, when you’re freelancing, you need all the publicity you can get. Now who am I gonna kill here?” He swung the pistol from Ouellette to Batman and back. The motion was too smooth to leave an opening. “Maybe I should do you both.”

“You’ve got a problem, then,” Batman said. “If you shoot him, I’ll take you down. But if you go after me first, I’ll still take you down, and he’s going to run.”

“You’ll take me down?” Deadshot grinned. “I like a challenge—but you’re right, I gotta make sure this guy doesn’t get away. Hmmm.” He scratched at the side of his head with the muzzle of the gun. “Oh. I got it.”

He pointed the gun down and shot Ouellette in the foot.

Ouellette’s scream lasted a lot longer than the sound of the gunshot. It also lasted longer than it took Batman to leap across from the window to the futon and knock the pistol from Deadshot’s hand. Ouellette rolled around on the ground, still screaming, as Deadshot smashed his left forearm into Batman’s nose.

Both of Deadshot’s forearms were sheathed in the steel housings for his wrist guns. Batman felt something crunch in his nose. Shooting pain caused his vision to go white for a moment, and his eyes watered. He went over backward, grappling with his opponent.

He had both of Deadshot’s wrists locked in his hands to prevent him from utilizing the wrist guns. If he tried to use them, the resulting explosion would probably leave Deadshot with stumps. So he didn’t fire.

Instead he lashed out with a head-butt. Batman turned just in time to avoid taking the blow on his already bleeding nose.

“I told you we weren’t done,” Deadshot snarled.

Deadshot ripped his left arm free. He pointed the wrist gun at Batman, who threw himself to the left. The weapon chattered, chewing a hole in the floor. Batman jackknifed forward, throwing Deadshot back. The wrist gun kept firing as he flailed, spraying the apartment’s walls and ceiling.

Batman kept his grip on Deadshot’s right wrist, using it as leverage to spin him around. He ducked his head under Deadshot’s right arm and lifted him into the air, then slammed him down on the kitchen island hard enough to crack the granite counter top.

The wrist gun cut out, either because it had run out of ammunition or because the impact on the counter had interrupted Deadshot’s fire control. Batman chopped a forearm into his throat and followed it up with three piledriver thrusts straight to his face. The last cracked the red monocle and bounced Deadshot’s head on the granite hard enough that his visible eye rolled back in his head for a long moment before coming lazily back to focus on his assailant.

“You have two choices,” Batman said. “We can talk, or I can keep hitting you.”

“You made me miss again,” Deadshot rasped.

Ouellette wasn’t screaming anymore, but he was still moaning and clutching at his foot.

“At least you hit his foot,” Batman said. “That ought to console you when you end up back in Blackgate.”

“Whatever,” Deadshot said. “I only stay there as long as I want to. Just like Arkham City, remember?”

“Tell me something,” Batman said, ignoring the taunt. “Why did the Riddler set you off on a timed series of assassinations… just like the Joker did when he and TYGER were in charge here? Can’t Nigma come up with his own ideas?”

“You’re the world’s greatest detective, aren’t you? You figure it out—there’s no deep, complicated reason here.” His voice became clearer as he recovered from the effects of Batman’s blows to the throat.

“Riddler’s doing it because he wants to be the new Joker. He wants to run the show. Only way he can do that is to let everyone know that he can take on you and Robin, take on Gordon, and keep you all dancing to his tune. Like the Joker used to.”

The expression on Deadshot’s face was laced with real disappointment.

“I woulda thought you had that all figured out already.” He shook his head. “You go off on a tangent, looking for deep, dark motives, when the simple truth is right there, staring you in the face.”

He was right.

The answer had been right in front of them the entire time, and he’d refused to see it. The parallels had all been there from the beginning—the bomb in the Gotham Merchant’s Bank vault, hunting Killer Croc, Mr. Freeze’s research. The puzzle hadn’t been difficult. He’d just refused to solve it.

He couldn’t admit that the Riddler was making a play for the Joker’s place in the underworld hierarchy, because to acknowledge that would mean admitting that the Joker was gone.

“I seen that look before,” Deadshot said. “You thought the Riddler was just playing some sort of twisted game. Think again, bud. He’s shooting for the top, and that’s what he’s been trying to tell you this whole time. Man, wait’ll word gets round!”

He started to laugh. Batman drew back and knocked him out with a single punch, pouring all of his anger and frustration—and, yes, embarrassment—into the blow.

Deadshot went down, and stayed down.

“
Now
we’re done,” Batman said.

He heard a whimper in the corner.

“You, uh… I thought you didn’t do stuff like that,” Ouellette said. Batman turned, and the man wouldn’t look him in the eye.

“You thought wrong,” he said.

Then he kicked open the window and was gone.