The Further Adventures of The Joker (18 page)

Pulling back from the camera, the Joker straightened his trademark purple zoot suit and said, “As I was saying: Batman! Who is he? Why does he vex me so? These are tonight’s questions. And answers? Answers I have none. But I’m gonna get ’em. For tonight begins the Joker production of the miniseries,
The Unmasking of Batman.
Sorry it wasn’t in your local listings. Lack of advertisers. They
hated
the script.”

McCulley poked his head in Gordon’s office.

“The TV people say it’s a microwave transmission,” he reported. “Remote. Probably mobile, or on a mobile relay. No trace possible.”

Gordon waved him away impatiently. The Joker was speaking again.

“In tonight’s stunning opening episode, and in honor of Halloween night, we’re going to begin with the unmasking of Archie Bittner. What do you say to that, Arch, me lad?”

Bittner made inarticulate noises through his gag.

The Joker yanked the gag away. “Speak up, man. Don’t be camera shy.”

“I—I-I’m not wearing a mask,” he sputtered, his eyes shifting nervously from the camera to the Joker’s rigor-mortis face.

“I’m not wearing a mask!” the Joker shrieked in delight. “Let’s all write that down. It’s destined to become a classic in the annals of television, right up there with ‘To the moon, Alice’ and ‘Just the facts, ma’am.’ ”

“But I’m not,” Bittner repeated.

“Isn’t he a scream, ladies and germs? Isn’t he a find? Oooh, I am
such
a casting genius. Now, the unmasking of Archie Bittner. Shall we begin? Get a good grip now, boys.”

Punkin Head and Jack-O’-Lantern laid their hands on Bittner’s shoulders to quiet his squirming, as the Joker presented his back to the camera, revealing his hitherto-concealed left hand curled around the bone shaft of a wicked knife.

Gordon gasped. And all over the city, that gasp rose from a million throats.

The Joker lifted the knife in a quick upward stroke.

“But I’m not wearing a mas—mummph.” Archie Bittner’s voice choked off as an unseen hand clamped his mouth. He began to jump in his seat. His agitated shoulders were visible around the Joker’s narrow purple back. On either side of him, Jack-O’-Lantern and Punkin Head strained to hold him steady.

The knife fell. Only the Joker’s elbows moved after that. There was no sound at first. Then came the gritty grating sound of metal scoring bone blended with the drumming of feet. Archie Bittner’s feet, Gordon realized, as horror crept over his craggy features. He knew men only made such sounds in their death throes. Mewling noises, muffled and frantic, added to the horrible symphony.

Commissioner Gordon turned away, moaning, “That fiend!”

“Here it comes, the grand unmasking!” The Joker’s voice chortled. “Did he do it? Or . . . ?”

Irresistibly, Gordon’s sick eyes were drawn back to the screen. He knew that he’d have to see how far the Joker had gone for himself. Just as the rest of the Gotham City audience would. For a lunatic, the Joker manipulated like a master psychologist.

As Gordon watched, the Joker’s back slowly straightened.

He spun like a dervish, venting a maniacal tittering laugh.

“Unmasked!” he shrieked. “Unmasked for all the world to see!” And then he stepped aside to reveal the seated figure of Archie Bittner, his naked skull, like a meat bone that had been rendered, staring with uncomprehending eyes—staring because his eyelids had been peeled from the raw bone along with the rest of his face.

His eyes, however, were dead.

The Joker held something limp and pale in front of the camera.

“Under it all, lies the ultimate mask,” he said gleefully. “And its name is bone, bone, bone!”

He stuffed the face of Archibald Bittner into his breast pocket and leaned drunkenly into the camera.

“Tune in tomorrow at this same time for chapter two and the unmasking of—but that would be telling. It may be a lucky member of our audience. It may be
you!
And if my dear, dear friend Batman is watching, if you’d like to spare the people of Gotham further installments, meet me at the place where it all began. I propose a temporary truce. Unmask for me, on camera, and my collection of faces will grow no larger.” He pointed to the camera like a bizarre parody of Uncle Sam. “You see, it’s
you
I really want to make a star.”

The screen went black. Within seconds, local affiliate transmissions resumed. A TV anchorwoman cut in with a hasty recap of the Joker’s latest outrage. Gordon switched channels. All around the dial, anchorpeople were recapping the Joker’s pirate transmission.

A phone outside Gordon’s office started ringing. Others took up the clamor.

“Who is it?” Gordon asked when McCulley put his head in.

“Everybody,” McCulley said. “The mayor. The governor. But mostly it’s the press.”

“Tell them all I’ll get back to them. And then meet me on the roof.”

“Yessir.”

Up on the roof of Gotham City Police Headquarters, Commissioner Gordon hugged himself against the biting air as his aide turned on the modified spotlight. The big tungsten lamp came on instantly. It sent a brilliant yellow beam into the sky. Fortunately, there was low cloud cover. Against the steely banks, a familiar symbol showed mistily—a stylized bat in a disk of gold.

Hours later, the clouds had thinned and the Bat-Signal ghosted in and out of view. Gordon’s teeth chattered and his thick hands were stuffed deep into his pants pockets to warm them.

McCulley came up the roof hatch.

“Nothing, Commissioner,” he said morosely. “No calls. No visitors.”

“Go home, McCulley. It’s going to be a long night.”

“Yes sir. Shall I—”

“Leave it on,” Gordon said curtly.

“Yes sir.” He turned to go. “Sir?”

“What is it?”

“Do you think he sees it, or—”

“Or what?”

“Maybe he’s afraid.”

“We’re all afraid, McCulley. Now good night.”

McCulley disappeared down the hatch and Gordon shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, seeking warmth.

By midnight, he accepted the truth. Batman was not going to appear. Commissioner Gordon walked up to the humming spotlight, whose heat beat against his face, and shut it down.

He went down the roof hatch a saddened man.

The next night it was Dawson Clade. Unlike the late Archibald Bittner, Dawson Clade was neither rich nor prominent. Clade was a down-and-out private detective.

His last minutes of life were broadcast to Gotham City to the strains of
The Twilight Zone
theme while the Joker expressed his profound disappointment over Batman’s lack of response in a doleful Rod Serling voice.

This time the Joker faced the camera while he “unmasked” his victim. Clade sat with his back to the audience. After the Joker finished outlining Clade’s face with the point of his knife, he peeled it away so the audience could glimpse bits of cartilage snap as flesh parted from bone.

The Joker proudly displayed his trophy, turning it around like a stage magician proving that, yes indeedy, the handkerchief was empty. The audience had a good look at both sides—the pink outer mask and the raw inner flesh that looked like the inside of an eyelid.

McCulley entered the commissioner’s office, white-faced.

“Shall I turn it on, Commissioner?”

Gordon sighed. “Yes. For one hour. Then shut it off and go home.”

“You’ll be here?”

“I’ll be here,” Gordon said leadenly. He picked up the phone and dialed the mayor directly. It would be their sixth conversation of the day—each one more strained than the one before.

“I’m telling you, Gordon,” the mayor said without preamble, “if you have any idea who your Batman really is, it’s your duty to divulge it.”

“We can’t hand him up to this madman, even if I did know.”

“He’s a damned vigilante!”

“But he’s not a criminal. It’s the Joker who’s cutting off faces.”

“The citizenry is panicked. No one wants to end up—excuse the expression—facedown in an alley over a feud between a circus fugitive and a human bat. The people don’t see Batman as a hero in this one.”

“Cooler heads will prevail.”

“And where is Batman? Hiding?”

“I don’t know,” Gordon said slowly.

McCulley entered without knocking. “Another body, sir.”

“Have to go, Mr. Mayor. I think Clade just turned up.”

Gordon grabbed his hat and shoved out the door.

Outside, he looked up and down the street, half expecting to see the Batmobile slither around the corner.

When it didn’t materialize, he got into his car and drove off, his moustache points bristling.

Gordon ducked under the yellow police-barrier tape and spoke to a detective at the entrance to an open basement on Crime Alley. A pair of M.E.s were inside working over a corpse lying on its stomach. They appeared reluctant to turn the body over.

“Anything unusual?” he asked bluntly.

“Other than the fact that the deceased has no face, no. But we’re still processing the crime scene.”

“Keep at it,” Gordon said, turning to go. The first TV newsvans came around the corner causing Gordon to curse under his breath.

They came at him, camcorders held high. Microphones were thrust at him like inquisitive antennae. And the questions began.

“Commissioner Gordon, who’s next?”

“No comment.” He tried to shove through the knot of reporters. They followed him like steel filings attracted to a moving magnet.

“Commissioner Gordon, where is Batman?”

“No comment.”

“Commissioner Gordon, is Batman a coward?”

“I don’t know!” Gordon said hotly. Then red-faced, he added, “I wish I knew.” And it hurt to say it. He ducked into his car and roared off.

Bruce Wayne’s head started to throb as soon as the cab entered city traffic. He had had the identical headache only ten minutes into the ride from the airport when he’d arrived in Mexico City five days before. It was a pollution headache—one of the problems of being a North American vacationing in the most populous—polluted—city on earth.

Out among the ruins of Teotihuacán. the air had been cleaner. But now, in the heart of the city—choked with pollution-spewing cars—his head began throbbing again. He sighed.

“Driver.”

“Si, señor?”

“Hotel Nikko.”

“No Zona Rosa?”

“The Zona Rosa will be there in the morning. I’m suddenly not up for any nightlife tonight.”

“Muy triste.”

The taxi turned off Viaducto beneath the big electric Coca-Cola sign and skirted Chapultepec Park on the Paseo de la Reforma side.

Bruce Wayne overtipped the driver and entered the spacious neo-Aztec hotel lobby. At the desk, he checked for messages. He was told there were none. It reminded him that he had told no one where he was vacationing.

Wayne rode the elevator to his room, entered with his magnetic keycard, and took a bottle of purified water from the mini-bar. Kicking off his shoes, he sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the tightness in his head lessen now that he was out of open air. Only in Mexico. Beyond the window, lightning flashes illuminated the congested Mexico City skyline. It was going to be another elemental Mexican night.

Sighing, Wayne turned on the TV. He had avoided television during his stay. But tonight, it was either that or boredom. He cruised the Spanish-language stations until he heard an American voice. It was a network news program. Wayne gave thanks for the miracle of cable and lay back to watch.

“In Gotham City,” the newscaster said melodramatically, “the question tonight is—where is Batman? After two nights of unspeakable televised mutilations of Gotham citizens by the maniac who calls himself the Joker, that refrain haunts the nation. How much longer will these depradations go on? Will Batman, now widely believed to be in hiding, branded a coward by some, accept the Joker’s bizarre ransom demand to unmask on camera? Or is the long nightmare for Gotham City only beginning?”

Wayne sat up abruptly, nearly upsetting his drink. “Here with the latest is Gotham City correspondent Lesley—”

Bruce Wayne’s eyes hardened as video clips of the mutilation murders of Archie Bittner and Dawson Clade were replayed.

He watched enough to get the gist of the situation and shut off the TV. He called down to the front desk.

“I’m checking out. Immediately. Please have a cab waiting to take me to the airport.”

As Bruce Wayne packed, the lightning storm outside his window intensified. But he had no eyes for its elemental fury. His mind was thousands of miles away, in Gotham City. His city. The city he had sworn to protect.

Alfred Pennyworth started from sleep. The sound of a car on the circular gravel driveway outside Wayne Manor was an unfamiliar one, but it promised hope. He struggled into a flannel bathrobe and hurried downstairs.

A cab driver was putting two suitcases on the hall floor. Looking tired, Bruce Wayne peeled a twenty-dollar bill from his billfold.

“Keep the change,” he told the driver. The door shut behind him.

“Master Bruce!” Alfred cried. “You should have called. I would have come for you.”

“No time,” Bruce Wayne said in a flinty voice.

“I tried to reach you, sir.”

“A vacation, Alfred, is no vacation if everyone has your phone number.”

“Of course, sir. I hadn’t realized Wayne Foundation matters pressed so heavily on your shoulders.”

“Not that,” Wayne said, shucking off a Chesterfield coat. “It’s the other work.”

“I understand, sir. I assume you’ve heard the terrible news. Do you require anything?”

“Coffee,” Wayne said, striding for the grandfather clock in one corner. He pushed it aside, revealing a secret door. “And I’ll take it below.”

Bruce Wayne was poring over the last two days’ newspapers at an ornate ebony desk when Alfred came down the Batcave steps carrying a sterling silver tea service.

Wayne regarded the pot of tea as it was laid before him and remarked, “Tea?”

“Better for the nerves, sir. There
is
coffee, as well.”

Frowning, Wayne accepted the tea. His eyes returned to the latest edition of the
Gotham Gazette.

“The place where it all began . . .” he mused. “Only he and I know where that is.”