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Authors: Martin H. Greenberg

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BOOK: The Further Adventures of Batman
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Working with Lafayette Boyent, one of the masters of classical drama, Bruce had mastered makeup, posture and voice. His impersonations could have earned him a place in the theater if the direction of his life had not been decided long ago.

When Charlie Morrison checked into the New Era Hotel, the assistant manager helped him sign in with no hint of remembering his earlier visit as Bruce Wayne.

The assistant manager was cheerful and helpful. Charlie Morrison was a man whose sapphire and ruby American Express card allowed him luxuries unknown to the ordinary citizen. Even among the crowds of visiting oil sheiks and heads of industrial parks, he was a welcome guest—tall, good-looking, quiet-mannered, and renowned for his liberal tips.

The assistant manager brushed back his muttonchop whiskers, a habitual gesture, and swiftly plucked out of a nearby tray a shimmering, plastic oblong slightly larger than a credit card. He held it out to Bruce.

“Your suite is penthouse A2, Mr. Morrison. It is one of our choicest suites, and I’m sure you will find it eminently satisfactory. This card will give you entry to all of the New Era’s facilities—the health club, the restaurants and nightclubs, the solarium, the flying room, and so on. There is a complete list of our services in your suite. My name is Blithely. It is my ambition to serve you. If there is any complaint at all, please do not hesitate to call on me day or night.”

Bruce thanked Blithely, picked up his key and went to the elevators. There was a special elevator for the penthouse suites. His luggage had already gone up. He pressed the button and stepped in when the heavy, ornate brass door opened. Just as the door was about to close, a woman slipped in with him.

She was tall, sleek and attractive, wearing a frock whose simplicity accentuated rather than belied its price tag. Her dark hair was tied back with a simple ribbon. She carried a small, richly brocaded purse that must have cost plenty, even in Hincheng, China, which Bruce remembered as the home of these objects.

“Yes,” she said, following his gaze. “It’s Hinchengese. Do you like it?”

Bruce shrugged. “It is quite attractive.”

She looked at him boldly. He didn’t like the intensity of her inspection. Yet there was something exciting about her, something forward yet subtle, and unashamedly feminine.

“You are also in one of the penthouses?” she asked.

“Yes. And you?”

“Of course. I always stay here when I am in Gotham City.” He had detected her faint foreign accent. But what was it? Not German. Something farther east . . . Czechoslovakia, perhaps. “Dear old penthouse A1 has become something of a home for me. Do you stay here often?”

“My first time,” Bruce said.

“You will like it here very much,” she said, as the elevator came to a soft stop and the door slid open.

They walked together down the corridor. Penthouses A1 and A2 were opposite each other, the only apartments on the floor. They opened their doors with their cards.

“By the way,” Bruce said, “I’m Charlie Morrison.”

“Perhaps we will meet again,” she said. “I am Ilona.” She closed the door softly behind her.

Bruce’s clothes were already laid out by the hotel staff, all except the one large leather case to which he kept the only key. In it was the Batman equipment he might soon need, if his instincts were to be trusted.

The suite was indeed beautiful, with a breathtaking terrace view of Gotham City. The city looked magnificent at this hour, a sleeping giant composed of the bodies and minds of its millions of inhabitants.

Was one of those inhabitants the Joker? Impossible. Yet he had seen something.

Or had he?

He sighed and turned away from the terrace.

The living room of his suite was furnished with rare antiques from Eastern Europe and the Near East. There were Turkish wall hangings on one wall, a Picasso on another. A quick inspection told Bruce that the Picasso was genuine, worth perhaps several million dollars. The television was state-of-the-art. The VCR came with a complete tape library, and a catalogue of others that could be called up on a moment’s notice. The music console was also impressive.

These things meant little to Bruce, however. This was the same sort of equipment he had at home. He knew from personal experience how difficult it is for the rich to buy anything really special.

He sat in an Ames chair and leafed through a magazine. He was preoccupied, morose. What was he doing here? What could possibly happen in a place like this? The New Era was one of the great bastions of safety with luxury. He was wasting his time.

He called room service and ordered a light dinner: eggs poached in Normandy butter, toast points, slice of Paris ham, fruit cocktail, demitasse. He showered and shaved and dressed in a lightweight evening suit. He had just finished combing his hair when a discreet tap at the door told him the meal had come.

The waiter wheeled the cart, with its high silver-domed salver, to the little table near the balcony. Bruce seated himself and opened the day’s newspaper that the man had brought. The waiter deftly laid out the silverware, then whisked the top off the salver and set the plate down in front of Bruce. He bowed, said, “anything else, sir, please call,” and started toward the door.

Bruce folded his newspaper and looked down at the plate. His expression froze. There, on the fine Spode china, was a mass of writhing snakes, little green ones and a few red ones. Among them were several small toads. They looked up balefully at Bruce with their evil pop eyes.

“Waiter!” Bruce called out as the waiter was going through the door.

“Sir?”

“What is the meaning of this?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Come here and tell me how you explain this.”

Dutifully enough the man came back into the room. Bruce noticed now that the waiter was almost bald, and that there were faint tattoo marks on his shining skull.

“What seems to be the trouble, sir?”

“Just look here and explain it,” Bruce said, indicating his place.

“Yes sir. I’m looking, but I fail to see anything amiss.”

Bruce looked down. The snakes and toads were no longer there. What was on the plate now was what he had ordered: ham and eggs by any other name.

“It’s the toast points,” Bruce said, recovering quickly. “They’re soggy.”

“They look all right to me, Mr. Morrison,” the waiter said, bending down to peer at the golden brown triangles of bread.

“You can see the moisture shining on them. And those eggs are practically hardboiled, not poached at all.”

Bruce glared at the waiter, daring him to dispute, but the waiter was not there for that.

“Yes, sir, of course, sir,” he said, his tone of voice indicating that he thought Bruce was acting a little peculiar but that he was prepared to humor him. “I’ll have the order replaced at once.”

He wheeled the cart out, closing the door quietly behind him.

It didn’t take long to replace his dinner, and this time it underwent no change. Bruce ate quickly. After he was through he wheeled the cart into the corridor. As he turned to return to his room, he saw a figure vanish around the corner at the end of the long corridor. A familiar figure. Tall, emaciated, with green hair and a crazy smile . . .

It took Bruce Wayne only three strides to reach full sprinting speed as he raced after the figure of his old enemy, who was looking remarkably healthy for one who was well and truly dead.

The corridor was empty. On this side of the hotel there were no suites, no doors at all. The Joker, or whoever it was, had vanished into a blank wall.

Bruce inspected the wall closely. Beneath a light fixture he saw a thin, metal-lined slit. He slipped the card the hotel had given him into it. A panel in the corridor’s wall slid back. Retrieving his card, Bruce went through the opening into the darkness within.

The corridor led down a long slope. Bruce hurried down it, just faintly hearing the sound of distant footsteps ahead of him. In another twenty yards the corridor branched. A faint swirling of dust in the left-hand branch told him which way to go. He plunged down a steepening incline. The corridor had at first been lit by fluorescent panels set into the ceiling. As Bruce proceeded, the corridor became dimmer. Some of the panels weren’t working. The pitch was so great that he was having difficulty maintaining his balance. There was a blocked-up window ahead of him, dimly perceivable in the gloom. There was no place to go other than through that or back up the slope. Bruce picked up speed and rammed the window with his shoulder, crashing through it and tumbling into a brightly lit room beyond.

The room was done entirely in white tile and was lit by overhead fluorescents. It was steamy and warm. As Bruce rolled to his feet, he noticed that there were many men in the room, some of them wearing shorts, some towels, a few nothing at all. There were machines scattered around the room. Bruce was familiar with them. They were exercise machines of the sort he had himself in his workout room. He was in the health club.

If there had been any doubt, that doubt would have been cleared up immediately when a short, muscular man with a wrestler’s build, wearing white slacks and a white T-shirt that read, New Era Health Club Instructor, strode up to him in a belligerent manner and said, “Say, look here, bub, what’s the big idea trying to break in here through the ventilator system?” Then he noticed the card in Bruce’s hand. “Oh, sorry, sir, didn’t know you were a guest. Our clients usually come through the door.”

The instructor was starting to grin. Bruce reached out and took the man’s biceps in his hand. It looked like a friendly gesture. And his grip tightened only slightly. But the instructor went pale, tried to pull free, saw it was no use and turned to Bruce with a frightened look on his face.

“Did you see someone just enter?” Bruce asked. “A very tall, thin man with green hair?”

“Green hair!” the instructor said, and seemed ready to laugh. A slight application of pressure to his biceps convinced him that it was not really a laughing matter.

“No sir, I didn’t. Really. I’d tell you if I did.”

Bruce released the man. A quick glance around the room told him that nobody answering the Joker’s description could possibly have come here.

Bruce said, “Get me a pair of swimming trunks, please. I think I’ll have a dip before I go back up.”

“Yes sir,” the instructor said. “And which way will you be leaving, sir? Going by the ventilators again?”

“No,” Bruce said, “they’re only fast getting here.”

Bruce felt better after doing a hundred or so laps in his explosive Australian crawl. He returned to his suite.

Mr. Blithely came to visit him a little later. Blithely wanted to know if there was anything the matter. By his expression, Bruce surmised that he really meant, is there anything the matter with you, sir? Bruce merely glared at him. Blithely explained that although it was not so posted, the management encouraged guests to stay out of the ventilation system. Bruce managed to hold his temper. Now was not the time for an outburst.

When the manager had left, Bruce went to the balcony and looked out at the night for a long time. He could hear music from the suite next door, and sounds of laughter and the clink of glasses. It sounded like someone was having a good time.

BOOK: The Further Adventures of Batman
2.59Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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