The Further Adventures of The Joker (15 page)

Perhaps, first, he would see what message was already there.

He pressed the button.

“Hello, Joker,” the voice said. It was a familiar voice. It was a voice he knew.

He ran, all the way down the stairs to the street, down the alley, into the ramified passages that would eventually lead him to the underground torture chamber. He had been gone only a little more than an hour. Only a little more. Surely not too long. It couldn’t have been too long.

But it had been too long. The woman was dead.

He stood looking down at the bloody, contorted body, at the face which, somehow, despite the terrible death it had suffered, seemed to be at peace. The loneliness rose around him like fouled water in an underground sewer, drowning him, and he still heard the words of the recorded message ringing in his ears.

“Hello, Joker, this is Delice Demain. The joke’s on you. Batman never had a sister.”

Help!
I Am a Prisoner

Joey Cavalieri

A
ll I ever wanted was to make people laugh. I wanted to take everybody on a trip with me to the places in my head. I had so many imaginary lands charted in my daydreams, topsy turvy principalities that rivaled the ones I admired as a lonely child: the depths of the Okefenokee Swamp; the untamed snowdrifts of Lower Slobbovia; the shifting desert sands of Kokonino County; the crisp, brittle atmosphere of the planet Mongo.

When I was young, I walked down the shadowy streets of Caniff’s China. I drank mead with Val, protected by Foster’s lofty turrets and stone battlements. The foreboding mists surrounding Eisner’s Wildwood Cemetery were just as inviting to me as a sunny day in Barks’s Duckburg.

The thing I wished for, strove for, when I grew up was what I nearly achieved. I wanted to draw a comic strip that people made a part of their day, every day, a strip that guaranteed them a laugh in a newspaper that often proffered nothing but bad news and bad weather. One ray of light among the murky tabloid shadows. A strip that could stand alongside “Peanuts,” or “Calvin and Hobbes,” or “Gasoline Alley.”

Now my comic strip kills people.

It’s all because of the Joker.

I have this theory that one can get into any building on Gotham’s Upper West Side by leaning on a doorbell, affecting the right aceent and saying “Chinese food” into the intercom.

I didn’t remember ordering, but it didn’t matter. I’d fallen behind on my strip and hadn’t left my atelier in days. It reached the point where I was ordering cold noodles with Szechwan sauce or moo shu pork practically for breakfast. Tipping the delivery kid was the high point of my social life.

I swung the apartment door open wide without bothering to consult the peephole. No delivery boy. I saw no one, until a fist the size of a bowling ball knocked me back across the living room. I collapsed in a heap on the floor.

My vision was blurred. I imagined that somehow my eyes had been knocked out of alignment. Through a haze I saw a massive man, more like a mountain, with arm muscles as big as my head.

The burly man-mountain stood over me, preparing to hit me a second time. I had enough presence of mind to envision my head bursting apart like a garbage bag full of red paint, spattering my ink-stained wall-to-wall. He cocked his arm back. I looked up, speechless, as much in appeal as to see my attacker. His black marble eyes stared back, cold and expressionless, like windows in a deserted house. Nobody home. No appeal, no pleading, no begging, nothing I could say would stay a second blow.

But
someone
stopped him.

Another man strode into my apartment, looking the place over as if he were going to buy it. His purple spats sank into the thick carpet in slow, measured steps. He paused to admire some of the artwork on my walls, treasured pieces I’d collected over the years. “Barney Google . . . with the goo-goo-googly eyes,” I heard him say. There was no greeting, no explanation of who he was, or why he was here. He took his time, frosting the framed artwork with his breath and wiping it off with a purple glove. “Terry and the Pirates!” he said, “Bonnnnnnng!” intoning an imitation of a Chinese gong from an old radio show.

“Bonnnnnnng” was exactly how my head felt. Then, my eyes readjusted from their haze. When I got a good look, I nearly swooned again. I saw his face, as white and final as moonrise. His smile came right from the label of a poison bottle, a Jolly Roger. Both of those were warnings that what resided within could kill you. This grin was no different.

He placed his hand on the man-mountain’s shoulder and spoke with a breezy familiarity, like he’d known me all my life, or he was just finishing a conversation we’d begun a short time ago. He didn’t even look at me during his monologue. “So, I says to Punch here, I says, ‘Punch, do you want to spend the rest of your life sucking back Thorazine in your OJ three times a day? No, of course you don’t.’ I says, ‘Punch, I’ve been in and out of Arkham Asylum so many times that they’re thinking of installing a revolving door just for me. But there’s one thing, Punchline, ol’ pal. Once we hit the open air, we’ll be hotter than a Gotham sidewalk in an August heat wave. You’ll be able to fry eggs on us. You can come with me,’ I tell Punch, ‘but I won’t be able to rejoin that ol’ gang of mine for a while. I’ll only be followed and . . . what’s that awful word? . . .
apprehended.
’ ”

The man-mountain picked me up by my shoulders. He held me that way, rooted to the spot, while the Joker sat on the couch. “ ‘We’ll need a place to cool off for a little bit. And
this,
’ ” he said as he ran a purple-gloved finger through the dust on the end table, “ ‘must be the place.’ ”

Why did the Joker pick me?

I’m his favorite cartoonist.

A lot of people I respect, other artists, writers, critics, you’d be surprised, say they don’t like “Boomertown.” They say it’s a hollow comic strip based on a demographic, not on any real experiences from my sheltered life. They say that baby-boomer humor is on its way out. The folks who don’t like it don’t think I draw all that well either. But it’s got me a couple of awards from the American Cartoonists Federation, and it’s got me into a couple of hundred papers.

It’s also got me this place, a duplex apartment on Gotham’s Upper West Side. I use the upper floor as my atelier, my studio. It’s a new building, and the real estate market being what it is, it’s expensive, so I don’t have many neighbors.

Right above the drafting board is the skylight. “Natural light,” the real estate lady said, “Perfect for an artist.” That skylight cost me at least twenty-five percent more in rent, but it’s worth it. I see the sun overhead in the morning, and the moon at night. Often, when I’m behind in my work, they’re my only companions.

I gained two more companions, unwanted ones.

Two massive hands gripped my arms to my sides. The sullen giant had a narrow focus to his attention, but I took up all of it. He was eager to toss me to the floor at the slightest indication of movement, even an exhale. “We have quite an aficionado here, Punch,” said the Joker, pulling down framed Sunday comic strips on my walls. The original art from the old days was particularly rare, since comics syndicates seldom returned drawings to the artists, but discarded them after use. “Winsor McCay’s ‘Little Nemo in Slumberland’ . . . Crockett Johnson’s ‘Barnaby’ . . . ‘The Kin-der-Kids’ . . . ‘Polly and Her Pals’ . . . ‘Alley Oop’ . . . You’ve got good taste, fella.” The Joker smashed the glass frames against the coffee table, raining shards over a thick art-book collection of “Thimble Theatre.” “And if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s good taste.” He shredded the heavy drawings to confetti. He danced about the room and tossed the paper tufts everywhere, giggling.

I fought against the restraint. “That . . . that stuff was irreplaceable!”

He stopped. “Irreplaceable?” He walked toward me. I tried to get away, but the man-mountain held me still. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.” There was hardly an inch between us when he pulled his lapel flower up close to my face. “Your miserable life is irreplaceable.” It squirted.

“My eyes! They’re burning up! Acid!”

“Not acid, you big sissy. Lemon juice. Packs quite a wallop, though, doesn’t it?” He produced a walking stick, seemingly from nowhere, and twirled it like a drum majorette. The tip of the cane had a fist-sized replica of the Joker’s head. “Now Punch and me, we’re guests here. So you could at least show us a little. Damn. Hos. Pit. Al. Lit. Tee.” He punctuated each syllable by jabbing me hard in the stomach with the cane head while Punch held me fast.

They made themselves at home on the lower floor of my duplex. The man-mountain stationed himself at the door as my “receptionist.” He ordered food, accepted art-supply deliveries, took in packages, dealt with Chinese food delivery boys. “You might try to slip out a fortune cookie message,” explained the Joker. “ ‘Help! I am a prisoner!’ I can’t have that!” He laughed.

He also ordered a few things from a hardware store for extra security. A large padlock kept me in the atelier during my working hours. He caulked every window in the place with that super adhesive they advertise on the late movie. That was so I couldn’t open them and yell out to passersby. He put up wire mesh over the windows so I couldn’t break them and drop out a note. He needn’t have bothered. I was too intimidated by his pal Punch to pull either stunt. In the elapsed time between such a stunt and its discovery, I could be a dead man.

I remained upstairs, working. Business as usual, going on inside. I have so few friends, and my schedule is so demanding, that my becoming cloistered had little effect on the strip. Since childhood, my closest friends have been products of my imagination, penciled and inked in by me. As I spent the hours drawing, I nearly forgot who was living downstairs. I lost myself in “Boomertown.”

Until the Joker began to make suggestions.

One evening, we had settled down to yet another Chinese delivery meal, one of the few things for which the Joker would plug the phone back in the wall. “Siddown,” he said. “It’s not poisoned . . . yet.”

Wiping the sauce of the General Tso’s chicken from his chalky face, he leaned across the dinner table at me. “I want you to put something in your little strip for me. It’s not a big deal, I don’t want it plastered all over the place. Just work it into the background.”

“What is it?”

“Some waves. You know, a cartoon representation of the open sea. And a row of figure eights. Just do it.”

“Why?”

The man-mountain stood up, knocking his chair backward.

“Just do it.”

Some nights later, another helpful hint. The Joker paused between picking up prawns with his chopsticks. “Here’s another background scene for you. Draw in some animals in cages. Next to ’em, there’s an automobile parked, with a man getting out of the car door.”

“You want me to draw practically a whole circus coming to town? But . . . ‘Boomertown’s’ an urban strip! How can I possibly work that in?”

Punch reached over and grabbed my wrist so tightly I thought it would snap off. He dragged me and threw me against the couch. He hit me in the stomach so hard I thought the barbecued prawns would come up. In the next moment, they did.

“You’re a creative genius,” said the Joker. “You’ll find a way to do it.”

I get the
Gotham Gazette
delivered, not only for the news. I like to see how “Boomertown” looks reproduced in an actual paper, not just in the syndicate proofs.

One story caught my attention. Two men had been murdered in town, several days apart. One named Barry Cates, the other a Jeffrey Zuckerman.

The killings bore little relation to one another. The men were dissimilar. Cates was the headwriter on a soap opera. Zuckerman was a waiter in a deli.

The only possible connection the two men had was that they had both served on a jury together. That jury sent a man known publicly as the Joker to Arkham Asylum, supposedly for life.

Was there some link between these men . . . and what the Joker was doing in my apartment?

I would daydream out the studio window, see people on the sidewalk below passing by. I didn’t dare yell out to them.

I would never have tried to make contact with them even if I weren’t a prisoner. Left to my own devices, I’d stay here among my books and my drawing board.

I’d see them all drift languidly in and out of my window’s range. Giggling young girls that I’d be too shy to ask out. Mothers leading their children by the hand as they scurry across the street. Men in tank tops bouncing a basketball on their way to the playground courts. Their infectious laughter floats up to my window. But it’s a laughter I never shared. I wasn’t good at sports or socializing. I was off in my own little world, too busy making my first attempts at drawing. What money I had I never spent on going out with girls or with friends. I saved it to buy collections of “Little Nemo” or “Little Orphan Annie.” I could never share their camaraderie if I wanted to.

I was a prisoner long before the Joker got here.

The Joker looked at the art for another daily strip. “I did what you said,” I told him. “See? There’s the desert tree and the boating dock.”