Batman 6 - The Dark Knight (20 page)

Richard and Raymond Peterson were bored of sitting in traffic. They had been stuck in the back of their parents’ station wagon for almost forty minutes, and were trying to keep themselves amused. Turning to look at the row of parked cars not too far behind them, they aimed their fingers at them, pretending to blow them up.

Loud explosions soon drowned the noises they made out as one by one the cars they were pretending to shoot started blowing up! Just as the two boys were trying to figure things out, the dark shape of Batman speeding over the remaining cars on his pod filled the rear window.

“Whoa! The Batman!” shouted Raymond.

“No way,” said Richard. “Cool!”

Above, men in a helicopter were obeying a guess from their commander and pursuing a truck traveling much faster than it should have been. Down a city street about a mile from a densely populated suburb and a sprawling shopping mall that served it and those Gothamites who didn’t mind a little ride.

“Be bad if he gets to those civilians,” the pilot said.

“Then we won’t let ’im,” his companion said, cocking an assault rifle.

Rachel had gone back to her office, and was sitting slumped in her chair, listening to a portable radio and watching a television with the sound muted. Both were reporting on the violence in lower Gotham, and both had, really, nothing to say. The police had decreed the air over the area a no-fly zone and patrol cars were blocking land access. All the journalists could say was that
something
was going on and that something was noisy.

The Joker was alternately watching the chopper directly overhead and the pavement in front of him. The sky was almost completely dark, but the chopper’s red running lights betrayed its position and the truck’s head beams lit the road. The Joker braked the truck, pulled a walkie-talkie from the dashboard and shouted into it: “Tee ’em up.”

On a nearby rooftop, a thickset man wearing coveralls aimed a cable gun, a twin to the one used in the bank robbery—

And another man, on a fire escape, also in coveralls, aimed a cable gun—

Both guns discharged at once, and both struck the seventh floor of an office building, forming an X over the street, nearly invisible against the night sky and the shadows cast by the buildings.

At the last second, the helicopter pilot saw the cables, but by then his rotor had struck the place where they crossed. The chopper’s nose tilted up, and then down, as it dropped toward a nearby building, then crashed to the street. The engine exploded, scattering fiery debris into the air.

Batman steered the pod across three lanes of traffic and into the parking lot that adjoined the commuter station. He crashed through the front doors and was in a long mall lined with specialty shops. He gunned the pod up a steep flight of steps and exited his shortcut.

Dozens of commuters stopped staring down the tracks, looking for their train, and looked instead at something they had never seen before, some kind of motorcycle and . . . Could that possibly be the
Batman
astride it?

He saw the Joker’s truck on a side street directly behind the tracks and gunned the pod’s engine, bouncing off the platform and across two sets of rails and up onto another platform and down steps and onto the street, a half block from the truck. Batman spotted a possible shortcut, which might put him ahead of the Joker, a narrow alley that bisected the block. But six Dumpsters were stacked at the far end, completely blocking the egress onto the street. Without slowing, Batman thumbed a red button on the pod’s handlebars and the cannons from beside the front wheel fired. There were two blasts, two burst of red flame, and, with a deafening
clang,
the Dumpsters tumbled out of the way.

The Joker slowed as he saw, through the grimy windshield, the pod and Batman emerge from the fire and dust a block ahead. The pod was skidding impossibly sideward, still racing toward them.

“Guess it
was
him,” he said admiringly.

The pod was equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry, and one device might do the trick . . . He touched a stud on the steering gear and a harpoon trailing a steel line left the front of the pod with a loud
hissss
. . . It embedded itself below the bumper, then Batman swerved underneath the truck, slalomed, and guided the pod around a light pole several times as the line between axle and pole tautened. As the cable went taut, it ripped one of the posts from its foundations. The truck’s front wheels caught, and it flipped over end over end.

The Joker kicked out a badly cracked window and crawled from the wreckage. He jumped over the median and began waving his pistol at oncoming traffic.

Batman released the end of the cable and gunned his engine, ramping up a building at the end of the street, tilting the pod up and over. The carriage of the pod spun around so that when the pod landed, Batman was upright and facing the street. He then guided the pod up and over the median and past cars whose drivers were gawking. Batman sped toward the Joker, who was firing randomly at the oncoming traffic. As he saw Batman approach, he started walking calmly toward him.

“Hit me. Come on.
Hit me!”
he shouted at Batman as he held out his arms. He knew that Batman would never kill anyone, but he also knew that same rule might not apply to him. He watched in satisfaction as the pod did not alter its course and Batman drew closer and closer. Just as he braced himself for the full effect of the high-speed vehicle inches away, Batman swerved at the last second and slammed into a wall, unconscious.

The Joker’s men had extricated themselves from the wreckage of the truck and were running to join their boss.

One of them knelt and grabbed at Batman’s mask. There was the buzz of electricity. The man yelped, fell backward, and twitched. The Joker apparently thought that an associate taking maybe 50,000 volts was hilarious. He laughed, and was still laughing as he opened a switchblade and knelt next to Batman.

“Drop it,” a familiar voice said.

“Just give me a second,” said the Joker.

There was the sound of a pistol bullet being chambered and James Gordon said, “We got you, you son of a bitch.”

Harvey Dent sat in the armored van waiting. The rear door swung open and he saw Jim Gordon.

“
Lieutenant
, you
do
like to play it pretty close to the chest.”

“We got him, Harvey.”

Dent nodded, and shook Gordon’s hand.

Dent watched Gordon and the Joker leave in an unmarked car. He looked around for Batman, but he had already disappeared into the shadows. So much for thanking him, Dent thought . . . The ban on journalists had been lifted, and already the street was swarming with reporters and the tools of their trade. A dozen of them closed on Dent, brandishing microphones and cameras.

Ramirez shoved them back. “Let him be! He’s been through enough.”

“Thanks, Detective,” Dent murmured. “I’ve got a date with a pretty upset fiancée.”

“I figured. Counselor.”

There was a ring of patrol cars around the Gotham Central lockup, and a pair of guards armed with riot guns at every entrance and at the tops and bottoms of every staircase.

The Joker sat alone in a holding cage. His makeup had run, his clothes were torn and soiled. Yet his erect posture and calm demeanor gave him an undeniable dignity. A uniformed officer struck the bars near the Joker’s head with a nightstick; the Joker did not flinch.

James Gordon exploded. “Stand away, all of you. I don’t want anything for his mob lawyer to use, understand? Handle this guy like he’s made of glass.”

The mayor entered the area and strode over to Gordon. They shook hands.

“Back from the dead?” the mayor boomed. “How’d you manage it, anyway?”

“Nothing fancy. Bulletproof vest. I let ’em think I was dead to help protect my family.”

The mayor looked at the Joker. “What’ve we got?”

“Nothing,” Gordon said. “No matches on prints, DNA, dental. Clothing is custom, no labels. Nothing in his pockets but knives and lint. No name, no other alias . . . nothing.”

“Go home, Gordon. The clown’ll keep till morning. Get some rest. You’re going to need it. Tomorrow, you take the big job.”

Gordon shook his head
no.

“You don’t have any say in the matter . . .
Commissioner
Gordon.”

Gordon found that he had somehow misplaced his house keys and had to ring the front door bell. Barbara opened the door and stared at him slack-jawed, then slowly stepped aside. Gordon smiled and reached for her.

“You bastard,” she said, and slapped him.

“I thought it was best if you didn’t know—”

“Best for
who
? Me? Your kids? Or best for your
job
?”

Gordon started to apologize, but with a small cry Barbara was in his arms, her lips pressed against his in sheer happiness.

One of James Gordon’s secrets was that every night he was home he read a bedtime story to his young son. He was just closing one of James, Junior’s favorites,
The Stinky Cheese Man,
when the boy, who had seemed to be sleeping, spoke.

“Did Batman save you, Dad?”

Gordon stroked his son’s hair. “Actually, this time I saved
him.
”

Gordon’s cell phone rang. He answered it as he was leaving his son’s room, listened, then broke the connection. He went downstairs, kissed Barbara, promised her he’d be back as soon as possible, then left the house.

J
ames Gordon pushed through a knot of detectives gathered in the observation room at Gotham Central and jerked a thumb at the Joker, visible both through a large glass window and on a video monitor.

“Has he said anything yet?” Gordon asked Ramirez.

Ramirez shook her head. Gordon moved past her and through a door. He sat at a table across from the Joker.

“Evening, Commissioner,” the Joker said pleasantly.

“Harvey Dent never made it home,” Gordon said.

“Of course not.”

“What have you done with him?”

“Me? I was right here. Who did you leave him with? Your people? Assuming, of course, that they
are
your people and not Maroni’s. Tell me . . . does it depress you to know how alone you are? Does it make you feel
responsible
for Harvey Dent’s current predicament?”

“Where is he?”

“What time is it?”

“What difference does
that
make?”

“Depending on the time, he might be in one spot. Or several.”

Somebody blabbed. One of the cops, or the courthouse people, or a civil servant—somebody trying to be nice, or seeking their fifteen minutes of fame, told a reporter that Dent had vanished, and within the hour the news was on all the local broadcasting venues and slated for the national network roundups.

Some of the print guys managed to squeeze it into late editions, others fretted that they’d have to wait another half day.

Alfred was dusting the library with the all-news radio station on as background company when he heard about Dent.

“Oh, dear Lord,” he whispered.

Hours later, Gordon stood and unlocked the Joker’s handcuffs. “If we’re going to play games, I’m going to need a cup of coffee.”