The Further Adventures of The Joker (3 page)

“Somewhat better, sir. I much prefer seeing your smiling face.”

“Put the tray down, Alfred.”

He set it on my desk, removed the lid. On the tray was a glass of milk and a sandwich.

“Jelly on this?” I asked.

“Of course, sir, isn’t there always? I’ve made enough of those miserable peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to remember the jelly.”

“Well, there was that one time . . .”

“I didn’t feel well. I forgot. Please have me shot for that one failure . . . Would you like me to eat it for you, sir? Not that I’m particularly fond of the mess, but you do seem a bit helpless at times.”

“I can manage. Hey, this chitchat is great, Alfred, but I’m really kind of pressed here. We’re talking about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and I’m trying to solve a riddle that could mean life or death. And I tell you, I haven’t got the mind for it these days. What should be obvious isn’t. I need a vacation in the worst way.”

I began to eat. He had remembered the jelly.

“The Joker, sir?”

“Yes.”

“What’s this list?”

“It’s too complicated to explain . . . You wouldn’t understand.”

“Of course not, sir . . . But what is it?”

“It’s a list I’ve made from the two tapes the Joker sent me. Words from them that struck me as possible code words. That sort of thing. I’m trying to deduce from it who his next victim will be.”

“Of course, sir. Might I see it?”

“If it will make you happy, Alfred. I’m going to eat.”

Alfred looked at the list.

“I can’t tell a thing from this.”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

“It’s your penmanship, sir. Very messy. Might I listen to the tapes?”

I set up the tapes, turned them on, sipped the milk. Alfred picked up a pen, wrote in the margins of my list.

“Don’t mess that up, Alfred.”

“Hush, Master Bruce. I’m trying to listen.”

When the tapes ran their course, I said, “Happy?”

“Well, sir, I don’t have the mind for these things. Not like you. But seems to me the use of legumes is a bit out of place. Rather formal. Isn’t that a bean or pea?”

“Yes, it is, Alfred. You’re up on your agriculture. You’ll note I’ve dissected the word and tried to spell numerous words with it, without success. Nothing that strikes a chord, anyway.”

“Of course, sir, I’m quite sure you’re the expert here. But isn’t this Joker one to take offense at odd things? My understanding of him, sir, is that he doesn’t have both his oars in the water. Correct?”

“Correct.”

“He makes a point of saying he’s giving you a report, says he’s your reporter. He talks about holding court. About you and Commissioner Gordon tapping it all out, and that’s what a court reporter does, taps keys. So, it seems to me he’s talking about the court reporter. Perhaps he dislikes the idea of his madness being recorded. The Judge sent him up, as you like to say, and his psychiatrist stated in court he was mad, in much nicer and more conservative terms, of course, and the reporter made a record of that to be permanently placed on file. If we knew the court reporter’s name . . . ?”

I put down my sandwich, punched up the trial transcripts and the court reporter’s name.

“Bean,” I said. “Jack Bean.”

“Your legume, Master Bruce?”

I was uncertain if I should be happy or embarrassed. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that to me. “Alfred, would you like to wear this suit and let me wear yours?”

“What? And look as ridiculous as you? I think not, sir.”

I pulled on my cowl and got out of there.

So I went to stop a murder, tried to find Jack Bean. I told Jim my suspicions (though I felt guilty that I couldn’t mention Alfred gave them to me), and he got the police in on it, of course.

Zip.

No Jack Bean. He wasn’t doing any court reporting that afternoon. The trial he was working had been closed for the day. Lawyer recesses, something like that.

We had officers combing all over for Bean. Had people calling around. He didn’t answer the phone at his apartment, so we went over there, afraid of what we might find. Me and Jim in the Batmobile, followed by a pack of uniforms and detectives. That wasn’t my idea or Jim’s, but the city council has been big on police involvement in my cases lately. They want to be sure their officers are on the scene of anything big that goes down. So I had to play mama duck, let all the little ducks follow.

Jim showed the building superintendent his search warrant, and he opened up Bean’s apartment. We went in and looked around.

No Bean, dissolved or otherwise.

I went next door and talked to a neighbor. A Mr. Monteleone. He was old and gray and wore knee-length shorts that revealed calves with varicose veins like hoses. He said he had lived in the apartment long enough to know Bean, and, “We have a drink together now and then, because you got to drink with someone so you don’t drink with just yourself, know what I mean?”

He said he was confident enough about Bean’s schedule to say he’d be in at four o’clock. He was always in at four o’clock.

“Think the Bean drinks a little too much,” he said. “Know what I’m saying? They mostly give him the little stuff these days. Traffic violation trials, that kind of thing. See, the Bean does everything around the drinking. Likes to get home at four so he can have a little snort before the TV dinner is ready, then he watches the news and throws another one down his neck. After that, he watches some of the sitcoms, ones with the young girls on them, know what I’m saying here? Drinks while he watches. Whole bottle of Scotch, nightly. I been over there some. Had a few snorts myself. He don’t hardly go out after he gets home. Lonely kind of guy. Know what I’m saying?”

I thanked him and he asked me if my cape got caught on stuff when I was running and jumping, and I said, “Sometimes.”

I went back to Bean’s apartment and Jim got all the cops to stand out of the way, and I started going through the place. The cops had already done that, but they hadn’t found much. I didn’t either. Some empty Scotch bottles in the kitchen trash. A few girlie magazines under his mattress. A nightstand with an alarm clock, a computer dating magazine, and coffee cup rings.

The bathroom was a nightmare. Greasy mirror, stained toilet. Tub with a crust instead of a ring, and a drain strainer full of lint and scum. If the Joker didn’t get him, whatever was growing in that strainer might.

I kept looking.

Four o’clock, Bean came through the door.

He was short and stout with a few tufts of brown hair on the sides of his head. His dome was slick as the bottom of a china bowl. His nose was a drinker’s ruin.

To say that he was a little surprised to find us there, puts it mildly. He almost dropped the sack of groceries he was carrying.

We explained he was on the Joker’s hit list, and that his apartment was being searched in case the Joker had rigged it with his dissolving chemical.

When he heard that, he went limp, sat down in a soft living room chair, and stayed there. His face oozed sweat. His blue shirt got so wet with it, it looked black. His eyes bulged. He leaned forward, looked like a toad ready to flex his legs and spring to the center of the room. He chattered like a squirrel: “You got something yet? Why me, huh? I got nothing personal against this Joker fella. I’m a court reporter, not a judge. I write down what’s said by everybody. You check in the light fixture there? Might have hid something in the light? If I was going to hide something, I might put it there. What about it, huh?”

Jim leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. He looked at me, said, “Well? Find anything in the light fixture?”

“One more look about,” I said, and I started with the bedroom again. As I searched, I took a nervous glance at the alarm clock on Bean’s dresser, watched as the time crawled toward five.

We could get him out of the apartment, but I wasn’t sure that would help. The Joker might expect that. He could be waiting somewhere with a high-powered rifle loaded with a pellet full of the chemical. Then again, he might not know we’d figured out who the next victim was. No matter how you went, with the Joker it was a crapshoot.

I checked the clock again . . . Then it hit me.

The clock. Bean was the kind of guy whose schedule would be easy to learn. You could time him like the sunrise.

The Joker had made us aware of the time. The clock was in plain sight . . . It added up.

I went over and picked up the alarm clock and pulled the miniature tools out of my utility belt and worked the back off.

There was a small explosive device attached to one of the Joker’s coins and that was attached to the alarm. Pretty simple. I easily disarmed it. The alarm had been set to go off at five. It was now 4:45.

But what about the water? There had to be water to mix with the chemical. It had to be planned in such a way that Bean would get both the chemical and the water.

I went back to the bathroom. Looked in the tub, under the sink, in the commode. I lifted the back off the commode, looked in there. Attached to the float was a plastic explosive and a miniature clock. It was set to go off at five. It was a small amount, but it was powerful stuff. If it blew, the entire wall would come out, on both sides, and the water pipes would shatter and the apartment would be flooded with water. The water would mix with the chemical.

Bean would get wet, then dissolved.

I disarmed the explosive.

I called Jim in and showed him what I’d found. “It’s harmless now,” I said, “long as we treat the explosive with a little respect.”

“It’s got my respect,” Jim said. “I’d give it a wedding vow if it wanted it.”

Jim and I shook hands.

Five o’clock came and went.

Then the phone rang.

“Do I answer that, or what?” Bean called to us.

We walked into the living room. The phone rang again. Jim said, “Yeah, go on. You’re in the clear. We found what we were looking for.”

The phone rang a third time.

Bean let out a sigh. “Thank God. Hey, I owe you guys, big time. I was afraid things were all over for me, you know?”

The phone rang a fourth time.

He answered it and a stream of water sprayed out of the receiver and hit him full in the face, making his flesh steam like fresh dog dung on a cold morning.

Bean screamed and went down.

Jim dove for him, but I grabbed him, pulled him back, yelled for the cops to stay away.

Bean’s head wobbled like a fat lady’s thigh, spread wide, went soft. His ears eased down his face as if they were flags being slowly lowered. He collapsed to the floor, squirmed. His head went from soft to liquidy. His eyes floated on the mess like grapes on vomit. His teeth sank into it like seeds. His head flowed slowly under the couch. The rest of his body was solid. It flopped once, went still.

The Joker’s chemical, of course. The coin in the clock, the explosive in the commode. I was supposed to find those. The Joker had replaced the phone with one of his own. A coin in the receiver. Water pressurized inside. When Bean answered, all the Joker had to do was activate the device electronically, and Bean got a faceful of the chemical.

There was nothing we could do. It was over in instants. We stood there like idiots. A roomful of cops and the great Batman, the Fool Detective.

Then there was a snap and the base of the phone exploded sharply and something popped to the ceiling and drifted down.

A purple party hat with the Joker’s face on it, floating to the floor with the help of a green paper parachute. It came to rest near the goop that was Bean.

Jim slammed his fists against his legs. “I thought we had him beat this time. It was after five.”

“He said fiveish, and it’s fiveish.”

“I think we both need a long rest,” Jim said. “Maybe retirement.”

I didn’t argue with that. There was something else to consider now. Jim and I were next.

I could almost hear the Joker laugh.

(Entry, October 31st, Halloween Night)

I had to stop the Joker before it was Jim’s turn. Since we knew he was four, there might not be a tape, and though he had good men, I didn’t believe they could protect him.

And for the moment, neither could I. I was too exhausted. So much, in fact, that if anything were to happen, I would have been useless. My muscles trembled. Spots swam before my eyes. The contents of the Joker’s tapes reeled through my brain and blended into mental white noise.

It was better that I chance some rest, then refreshed, go and stay by Jim’s side. And once I made that decision, laid myself down, my mind let go.

First I thought of the Joker; thought of when he was part of the Red Hood Gang and I had accidently caused him to fall over a railing and into a vat of toxic waste that transformed him physically into what he was today.

Had it been an accident? Or had part of me wanted to do him in even then, before I knew what he was capable of? Do we sometimes sense our greatest adversaries? Taste the bitterness of past life experiences? Or is it something else? Something even more primitive, like a sense of smell that tells us that here is a predator. Beware!

All I know is that, in a sense, I had created him and was indirectly responsible for every murder he ever committed. Perhaps, without my interference, he would have become nothing more than a petty thief.

But I was too tired for guilt. I began to sink down, down, away from it all, and . . .

The dream is technicolor and I’m wearing my 3-D glasses and holding my Scratch and Sniff card. I am the camera eye and the CAMERA goes CLOSE ON the JOKER sitting in a huge chair as if it is a throne. The chair is upholstered in regal purple and there is a series of great, green gems screwed into the top of the chair’s backrest. They glow as if filled with phosphorescent pus.

He’s wearing a green, ruffled shirt trimmed in bright yellow, a deep-purple dress coat and pants, highly polished green shoes with purple laces, and socks with purple and green clocks on them.

He looks as he always looks. Skin white as flour, hair heaped high, the texture of seaweed, the color of fresh lettuce. His lips are blood-red and he’s smiling, as he is always smiling: a wide, ugly smile showing plenty of nice, white teeth.