The Further Adventures of The Joker (53 page)

He tried not to let the information spoil his morning. The fact that thirty-six band players had died within thirty-six hours was a grisly coincidence, but no basis for panic. If the brakes of the bus
had
been tampered with, there could be more than one explanation, including insurance, as in the warehouse case. The alternative notion, that there might be some connection between the bus crash and the gas explosion—well, all right. Suppose there was some maniac out there who hated musicians? They’d catch the loonys and put him away. He shook the subject out of his head and picked up the next message. A man named John Burke had been shot and killed late last night for no apparent motive. Gordon checked out a later report, and was relieved to learn that Burke was a headwaiter. Not a musician.

There was a conference at the Mayor’s office that afternoon, but Hizzoner didn’t attend, being too busy politicking in this election year. Gordon did see District Attorney Tom Riggs and Milt Jaffe, Police Chief, and asked them about the two accidents. Riggs wouldn’t commit himself, but Jaffe was his usual blunt self.

“Accident, my left eyebrow! Somebody clobbered those brakes, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we came up with bomb fragments from that Yacht Club explosion. Somebody doesn’t like two-step music. Some crazy rock-and-roller, probably.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Riggs said. “Milt’s got three teenagers.”

“What have your boys got on this shooting last night?”

“The headwaiter? I’ve wanted to take a potshot at one of those snooty bastards myself.”

“So far, nothing,” Jaffe told the Commissioner. “Burke had no family, no friends outside the restaurant, lived alone . . . It may have been just a random shot from a window or rooftop.”

“That’s all we need,” Gordon said sourly. “A sniper on the loose.”

His good mood of the morning was gone.

That evening, the Commissioner came home to find his daughter entertaining a yuppie assistant D.A. named Mark Something-or-Other, whose deference toward Gordon made him feel ancient. For Barbara’s sake, he answered his questions with forced cordiality—until they got around to the subject of Batman.

“Some of us at the office were talking about him,” Mark said. “You know, wondering whether this vigilantism was good or bad for Society . . .”

You could hear the capital
S
. Gordon bristled and started to explain about Batman’s deputized status with the police, but the look on the A.D.A.’s face told him that he wasn’t going to buy that rationalization. As far as Mark Something-or-Other was concerned, Batman served the law by breaking it, and maybe the Commissioner was making a mistake by encouraging this superhero approach to crime control. If Gordon had had a better day, he might have let the matter slide. Instead, he exploded.

“So you think we don’t need ‘superheroes,’ huh? Then just who is going to handle the
supervillains?
Or hasn’t that occurred to you?”

“I’m not saying Batman hasn’t done some good,” Mark said stiffly. “But personally, I think these ‘supervillains’ have been overrated. I mean, in terms of the overall crime problem. This Joker, for instance. He’s done a great deal of damage, but he’s never really
succeeded
in his grandiose schemes, has he?”

“Because Batman has always foiled him,” Barbara said. “You have to admit that, Mark.”

“Yet he’s not behind bars, is he? The Joker is still on the loose, Batman or not.” The look of smug triumph on his face raised the Commissioner’s blood pressure ten points. But he saw the pleading look in Barbara’s eyes, and decided to change the subject.

“Well, where are you two headed tonight? Movies?”

“Mark’s taking me to the Comedy Corner. Jackie Jeeps is going to be there tonight.”

When Gordon seemed unimpressed, Mark said: “He’s one of those hot new stand-up comics.”

“Too damn many of them right now,” Gordon grunted. “And what I’d like to know is, why do so many comics have names that begin with
J?
Jackie Mason, Jackie Gleason, Jack E. Leonard, Joey Adams, Joe E. Lewis, Joe E. Brown, Jerry Lewis, Jerry Lester, Jimmy Durante, Jay Leno, Joan Davis, Joan Rivers . . .”

“You have a wonderful memory, Daddy,” Barbara laughed.

“But you left one out,” Mark said. “The Joker.”

Gordon was asleep when he heard the front door open, and he automatically reached for the bedside alarm. He still hadn’t broken the habit of monitoring his daughter’s homecoming hours, even though she was old enough to set them for herself. He was pleased to see that it was still before midnight, until he heard the mumbling voices downstairs and detected a treble note of hysteria. Was Barbara crying? If it was a lovers’ quarrel, it was none of his affair, he told himself. Yet, just the same, he slipped into a threadbare robe that should have been discarded five years before and padded quietly downstairs. He was just in time to hear the door close behind Barbara’s date. When she saw her father, she went trembling into his arms.

“Oh, Daddy, it was horrible! It was just awful!”

“Jokes that bad, huh?”

“No! He was killed—murdered! Right on stage!”

He pushed her away and saw the unmistakable stamp of terror on her face.

“Jackie Jeeps,” Barbara said. “The comedian. He was shot by someone in the audience! He just pulled out a gun and shot him!”

“Good Lord,” Gordon said. “Did they get the assassin? He didn’t get away, did he?”

“I don’t think anybody even got a good look at him! He was all the way in the back, near the exit door. But he was laughing louder than anyone else. He was still laughing when he shot him!”

“You poor child. It’s one thing to read about murder, but to actually witness it . . .”

“Mark and I were at a table in the front row. He was hit once in the chest and once in the head . . . there was so much blood! And there was that laughter—that terrible, eerie laughter.”

Gordon held her close again, rubbing her icy hands. But he felt cold himself, even in the warm confines of his comfortable old wool robe. He couldn’t help remembering Mark’s last words before they left the house only two hours before. Joker begins with
J
. . .

He expressed no theory about the murder at the office meeting the next morning. Nobody even mentioned the possibility of linkage until he dropped the hint himself.

The idea was quickly shouted down, although Riggs, perhaps out of professional courtesy, did admit there might be a vague pattern in the recent spate of violent deaths.

“Thirty-six musicians. A headwaiter. A stand-up comic. I suppose there’s a bit of a connection. Gotham nightlife?”

Jaffe was as blunt as ever. “The Bobby Armstrong Band only played for society weddings and geriatric dances. Same goes for the Yacht Club bunch. I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. If you ask me, it was one of Jackie Jeeps’s girlfriends. He had one for every day of the week.”

“How would you know that?” Gordon asked.

“I read it in Johnny Fisher’s column, in the
Gazette.”

“Funny you mentioned Fisher,” Riggs said. “I noticed somebody else wrote his column in today’s paper. Said something about him being sick.”

“What’s that got to do with the price of tomatoes?”

“Sorry.” Riggs shrugged, looking like a kid caught with jam on his fingers. “I kind of enjoy his stuff.”

That afternoon, when word came that Fisher had died of a yet undiagnosed ailment, the Commissioner thought of Riggs’s remark. The story made the
Gazette’s
evening edition, and Gordon read it curiously.

GOTHAM CITY, Sept. 4—Johnny K. Fisher, the syndicated gossip columnist whose “My Kind of Town” column has been a favorite
of Gotham Gazette
readers for the past five years, died at Gotham Hospital at two
A.M.
A spokesman for the hospital, Dr. Myron Buchalter, said that the cause of death was a toxic reaction, but its cause could not be determined until the autopsy was completed.

Thomas Brennan, editor of the
Gazette,
said that Fisher had fallen ill upon his return from an interview with some personality whose name Fisher had refused to divulge. The columnist had only stated that his interview would be a “first” for his column, and would have his readers GRINNING FROM EAR TO EAR.

The last five words weren’t capitalized in the
Gotham Gazette
—only in Commissioner Gordon’s mind.

Barbara fixed him a butterflied leg of lamb that night, with a side dish of ratatouille. It was his favorite meal, and she knew that something was wrong when he seemed unaware of what he was eating.

“Please talk to me, Daddy. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

“The letter
J,”
he answered ruefully.

On the local news show that evening, there was the report of another murder on the streets of Gotham City, and she could hear her father breathe a deep sigh of relief when they announced the man’s name. It was Rudolph Bottoms, and he was a professional gambler. An unpaid debt was high on the list of probable motives.

The next morning, the headline about the slaying was one of the smallest on the front page. There were two others in a bolder typeface.

CRUISE SHIP SINKS IN GOTHAM HARBOR

Four Crewmen Injured as Engine Room
Explosion Wrecks Docked Liner

“MISS WONDERFUL” CONTEST WINNER
DIES IN RUNWAY MISHAP

Cindy Lou Skinner, 20, Suffers
Fatal Concussion in Fall

But it was a small detail in the subhead of the third headline that gave Commissioner Gordon his most unnerving moment of the new day.

GAMBLER SHOT TO DEATH ON BANK STREET

Rudolph Bottoms Rumored to Owe
$250,000 to Las Vegas Casinos

Earned Notoriety as “Black Jack” Bottoms

The letter
J.

It was a tormenting, tantalizing detail, too obscure, too meaningless, too cryptic. Gordon knew there was no way he could inflict it as a “theory” on the various investigations now keeping his department busy. And to suggest a “Joker” factor was equally out of the question. No witness had actually seen the Grinning Ghoul, and what mad motive would the Clown-faced Killer have for wanting the death of these unrelated victims? Or was Gordon simply unable to find the relational factor?

He tried to stop thinking about it. He wasn’t a detective; he was an executive, managing the affairs of the largest municipal police force in the country. There were plenty of good investigative minds working on the problem. Unfortunately, one of the best minds of all was not available. The mind within the Microchiroptera Mask of the Caped Crusader.

When he arrived at Headquarters, he assumed that it was the sinking of the cruise ship
Carib Queen
that created the crush in the pressroom; it was certainly the worst pier disaster in the history of Gotham City Harbor. But he soon realized that the media smelled a sexier story in the dramatic demise of a young woman only moments after she had been crowned for her beauty. How could it happen? Where did the blame lie? Who was responsible for the weak structure of the runway where she took her victory walk, the last steps of her life?

But the most alarming question Gordon heard from the shouting reporters was this one:

“Is it true the police are investigating the possibility of sabotage? That someone had
deliberately
weakened that runway?”

It was something Gordon himself wanted to know, and he made a personal appearance in Milt Jaffe’s office to determine the facts.

“What’s this all about?” he asked. “You really suspect foul play in this beauty contest business?”

A Detective First Class named Bernie Wang was in Jaffe’s office, and there was nothing inscrutable about his expression. “Suspect, hell!” he said. “There’s no question about it, Commissioner. Somebody rigged up that stage. Somebody wanted to mangle that poor kid and they did a very good job.”

When Gordon saw his daughter that night, he felt still another kind of anguish. Cindy Lou Skinner had been very close to Barbara’s age. If Barbara had entered that dumb contest—and God knows she had the looks for it!—she might have been the doomed winner of that deadly crown.

But he found that Barbara couldn’t accept the idea of premeditated murder.

“The killer, if there was one, couldn’t have
known
that girl was going to win, Daddy. So how could it be homicide?”

“Maybe the perpetrator didn’t care who won, as long as the new Miss Wonderful was injured or killed.”

“You mean it was just at . . . random? What crazy fiend would do that?” Even though Gordon didn’t reply, Barbara guessed what was on his mind. “But that’s ridiculous, Daddy! Why would the Joker do such a thing? He always had
some
method in his madness, didn’t he?”

“Maybe we just can’t read the pattern yet. Maybe he’s trying to tell us something, in some bizarre, deadly code . . .”

She watched as her father removed his billfold, almost absentmindedly. Aside from the currency, she knew its contents only too well. One credit card, rarely used. Two pictures of Barbara, one as a toddler. One photo of the mother she never knew, her smile heartbreakingly sweet in the summer sunlight. And now, one other item. A folded slip of paper bearing the number that would summon Batman back to Gotham City . . .