Wayne of Gotham (32 page)

“Yes! I'm—is this Mr. Grayson?”

“Yes, everyone else is … out,” Bruce answered. Alfred was gone and he was feeling his loss keenly. Turning in his chair, he gazed down at the video image of the unconscious Amanda lying on the divan in the reproduction of the study nearby. “Apparently I'm also the chief cook and bottle washer here now … not to mention babysitter.”

“Oh, Mr. Grayson, I'm so relieved to find you,” Doppel said over the phone. “I did exactly as you asked, but I haven't heard anything back from Amanda since I dropped off that book. She hasn't called back since and—”

“You can relax, Nurse Doppel,” Bruce said, rubbing his hand across his eyes. “She's here with me. She's unconscious at the moment.”

“You shouldn't worry about that too much,” she replied. “That may just be an effect of her not receiving her medication on time.”

“You would know better than I would.” Bruce's voice sounded tired in his own ears. “Other than that, I don't think she's been harmed.”

“Oh, thank God!” Doppel responded. “Can you bring her home? I've no car and without her medication …”

Bruce froze in his chair, staring with angry bewilderment down the metal catwalk that led to the elevator entrance to the cave. His eyes were fixed on something he knew for a fact had not been there when he had left for the Kane Mansion earlier that same evening.

There, propped against the railing, gleaming clean and well oiled, was his grandfather's shotgun.

“I'll bring her,” Bruce said. “I'll be there in about twenty minutes.”

His eyes fixed on the weapon.

It was the last thing he remembered seeing before he awoke.

Academy Theater / Park Row / Gotham / 10:35 p.m. / Present Day

Bruce Wayne came slowly back to consciousness. He saw a bright blur in front of him surrounded by darkness. Thin, tinny music echoed around him, muffled as though by distance.

I was going to take Amanda Richter home. There was a phone call … Nurse Doppel … then my grandfather's shotgun …

A spray of sparkling laughter sounded in his left ear.

“Oh, Thomas, it's too funny!”

Bruce turned his head slowly, tentatively. He tried to focus his eyes. He seemed to be having trouble controlling his movements.

The hazy silhouette of a head atop a long, tapered neck filled his vision. Platinum blond hair shifted in and out of focus. The vague head tilted back, laughing again.

Bruce closed his eyes hard and then blinked them open.

The shape next to him came into focus. She was sitting just to his left in a row of theater seats while she laughed at something playing on the screen.

He shook his head, trying to clear it, and then looked again.

She was another version of Amanda Richter. Her long hair was now piled up onto her head into a bouffant style vaguely reminiscent of the late 1960s. Amanda's makeup was carefully done to match the emerald green dress.

Bruce's eyes widened with the shock of recognition, his vision suddenly clearing.

The dark stains were still visible in the satin, radiating in an irregular pattern from the entry hole punched through the high scooped collar just above the left breast. The stain radiated undisturbed down past the cinched waist, where it broke up just above the knee into smaller patches and splatters.

It was her dress … IS her dress. Mother
?

She turned to face him, her pupils dilated and unfocused. “Oh, Thomas, this really takes me back!”

Bruce turned to the screen. It had originally been a silent film, though he could hear a tinny piano orchestration playing from the theater speakers. Douglas Fairbanks leaped up onto the balcony after having defeated Noah Beery and started making eyes at Marguerite de la Motte.

It's that same damn movie. We came to the art theater retrospective that night. It was a charity event for the Gotham Arts Council.

Bruce looked quickly down. The tuxedo coat was unbuttoned, exposing the pleated, formal shirt beneath. There was a terrible dark stain on this garment, too, with two finger-sized holes within two inches of each other in the chest.

My father's tuxedo.

Bruce's hands began to shake. A short figure was seated on his right. He turned slowly toward it, dreading what might be there.

The Scarface ventriloquist dummy stared back up at him. It was no longer in its customary gangster pinstripe suit, but now wore a small tuxedo which was slightly too large for him. Bruce recognized it at once as his own, when he was a boy. He knew it from the pattern of the stains that were burned into his childhood.

Bruce tried to stand up at once, but his legs were unsteady beneath him.

“Sit down, Thomas!” Amanda urged. “You're ruining the show.”

Bruce collapsed back down into the seat. He was finding it difficult to breathe.

Douglas Fairbanks stood next to Marguerite de la Motte and rakishly spoke to the cheering crowd below. A title card then appeared on the screen.

Have you seen this one
?

Suddenly the film jumped on the screen. There was a loud pop and a grating sound. Then the scene changed to another crowd—also silent, and this time without the thin background music. It was the Kane Mansion ballroom … and Bruce realized he was seeing the footage of the ballroom shot that night by the newsman. There were scratch marks running through the film, but the image was still clear. There was the hodgepodge costume that looked more like a bat than any hero of popular imagination struggling against the Moxon mob at the end of the ballroom. There was Lewis Moxon being knocked unconscious.

“Oh, Thomas,” Amanda cooed, wrapping herself around Bruce's left arm. “I never really saw you before that night.”

“Amanda,” Bruce said, “we've got to get out of here.”

“Thomas! The movie's almost over—besides, that's
you,
” Amanda purred back at him. “I think I started falling for you right then, when you punched poor Lewis. I don't think he ever forgave you.”

The end of the footage grew bright and spotty, and then the sound rumbled once again, dramatic marching music playing through the hall. A new title, this one animated although still in black-and-white. It proclaimed, “
News on the March,
” and the title was shouted by an announcer's voice. The music continued as a second title card popped onto the screen.

NEWS ON THE MARCH

END OF AN APOCALYPSE

Vigilante Murderess Meets Gruesome End

FEBRUARY 1962

Bruce drew in a measured breath, his eyes fixed to the screen.

It's a message … for me …

“Blackgate Penitentiary!” the announcer continued in dramatic and deeply resonant tones as old stock footage of the prison walls splayed onto the screen. “Judgment isle for the first of the mass murderers known as the Apocalypse. Here, within these walls, came the grim end of Adele ‘The Chanteuse' Lafontaine.”

The newsreel footage showed the Chanteuse being led up the stairs onto the elevated gallows frame and the rope being affixed around her neck. She was wearing the same distinctive green coat she was always pictured in.

“Tried and convicted of sensational and often deadly crimes, Lafontaine was sentenced to be hung at midnight for her crimes, but met an even more shocking fate. Due to an error by the executioner, the length of her fall was miscalculated …”

Amanda averted her eyes.

“… and the result was a nearly complete decapitation of the criminal. It was too long a drop and too quick a stop for the woman who was once hailed as a vigilante hero and had since become one of the most flamboyant murderers in Gotham City. One Apocalypse down … three more to go!”

Bruce looked down suddenly at the Scarface dummy staring back up at him from the seat on his right. He knew something of the history of Scarface. Those in the underworld swore the dummy was cursed, and the legend was that it had been carved from the wood of the Blackgate gallows by an inmate named Donnegan. Donnegan was a cellmate of Arnold Wesker, who escaped Blackgate with the carved figure. Wesker circulated among the underworld in the early '60s, right about the time the more extreme villains of Gotham began cropping up. Bruce stared back at Scarface.

Are you the source? Every super-criminal in the city infected with the virus you carried from the blood of the Chanteuse? That would mean every costumed freak who …

“We're leaving,” Bruce said, standing up. “Now!”

“But the show isn't over, Tommy!” Amanda complained, gesturing toward the screen.

“I know how it ends,” Bruce snarled, pulling Amanda to her feet.

He pulled her along behind him down the row, his feet still feeling a little unstable beneath him.

“What about Bruce?” Amanda wailed, reaching back toward the ventriloquist dummy.

Bruce ignored her. Many of the seats were in disrepair, hampering their passage. The theater had been closed for some time. He knew because he had bought it and closed it.

The projector continued to run from the booth high up on the back wall as he dragged Amanda behind him. He reached the rear doors of the theater and pushed against them. They moved slightly and then stopped. Bruce let go of Amanda's hand, gripping the inside edge of one of the double doors with his fingertips and pulling the double-hinged door toward him. It swung open easily … revealing a solid steel plate welded to the frame that filled the entire exit.

“Damn it!” Bruce turned, searching the room for an exit—any exit—except the one he knew would be open to him. The newsreels continued to play on the screen, their sounds filling the dilapidated theater and the next slate catching his eye.

NEWS ON THE MARCH

WAYNE FOUNDATION
CRUSADE AGAINST GERMAN MEASLES

All Citizens Tested for Virus in Face of Outbreak

AUGUST 1965

“The national outbreak of rubella—commonly known as the German Measles—has been ravaging communities from coast to coast … but today, thanks to the generosity of local philanthropist Dr. Thomas Wayne, Gotham has a new weapon against this scourge: a quick test for the virus for every citizen of the city and its environs.”

Thomas Wayne smiled from the torn theater screen, waving at the camera. This was followed by a cascade of shots showing medical professionals drawing blood from people of many different ages and professions.

“An invaluable aide to possible quarantine efforts, Wayne Enterprises is funding this program without the use of tax dollars. Hospitals, clinics, and even your local doctor are all doing their part to make sure every man, woman and—that's right, Suzie—child in Gotham can benefit from these tests …”

Bruce snatched Amanda's hand once more into his own, bringing her with him toward the next exit as he turned over the newsreel in his mind.

The virus testing in '65 had to have been a cover—a façade. There was a rubella outbreak at the time and there were concerns about it, but the disease itself did not warrant a citywide testing for the virus. EVERYONE had the virus. The only reason to test the entire city was if someone was looking for something else. It was entirely funded by Wayne Enterprises—so his father must have been on the hunt, trying to find and isolate anyone who might have had contact with the Richter virus. Anyone with amped-up emotions, obsessive focus, or extremes in dress and behavior …

The second set of back exit doors also proved to be sealed. Each of the side exits proved blocked as well, until he came to the one he knew would open—the one that had opened so many years before.

Bruce turned to the woman wearing the last dress his mother wore in life. “Amanda! Listen to me!”

“What?” The woman seemed confused and dazed. “Tommy, who are you talking to?”

“Listen to me!” Bruce said, shaking her slightly. “I want you to stay in here, you understand?”

“Take me home, Tommy,” Amanda murmured. “I always loved you the best. You know that, Tommy.”

“Yes … yes, I know that,” Bruce said. “I've got to … go out and take care of something. I want you to go back and sit with Bruce … you understand?”

Amanda lifted her face up toward Bruce, her eyes glazed but her smile beaming. “I … think so.”

What if we had stayed a little longer? What if we had left by another door? What if … What if …

“You go back, you understand?” Bruce said, his voice heavy with emotion. “I'll come back for you.”

“Sure, Tommy,” Amanda said, patting him on the cheek. “You always take care of me.”

Bruce watched her make her way back into the theater. She passed down the row once more and sat down next to the Scarface dummy, cradling her arm around it affectionately.

Bruce passed through the side curtain and came to the double-exit fire doors.

Crime Alley, he knew, lay just beyond.