The Further Adventures of The Joker (59 page)

The guard did not say he didn’t know. But then, he did not say anything. The Joker’s hand clamped the guard’s face.

The Joker nodded. “You guessed it. Lucky you, it’s your turn.” The Joker shoved the nightguard backward and stepped inside.

The other pseudofirepersons trooped in after him, a pair pausing to bind and gag the nightguard.

Two guards on duty in the building’s security control room watched it all on the bank of monitors.

“Do you see this, Darrell?” Without taking his gaze from the screen, he reached toward the button that would alert police headquarters.

“I see it, Harvey.” And as he spoke, Darrell grabbed Harvey’s wrist.

Harvey turned his head and found himself looking into the mouth of the pistol in Darrell’s other hand. “What—!”

Pulling Harvey by the trapped hand, Darrell swung him, castered chair and all, away from the control panel. Then he let go of Harvey, but covered him with the gun while they watched the screen showing the deputy fire inspector advance toward the control room.

Eyes and gun never leaving Harvey, Darrell buzzed the door open for the figure in the tailored fallout suit.

The Joker entered and took in the tableau, “Ah! All as it should be in the control room. Everything under control.” Then he snapped his fingers and held out his hand to Darrell.

Darrell reached his free hand into his breast pocket and drew out a master key and a piece of paper filled with numbers. The Joker took them without stepping into the line of fire.

“All there, Boss. Got the last one just this afternoon, on one of the minivids I planted to tape the jewelers working their vault combinations.”

The Joker said pleasantly, “That’s right, tell all our secrets to our friend here.”

Darrell reddened, then paled.

Moving smoothly, still staying out of the line of fire, the Joker slipped Harvey’s pistol from its holster, then stepped back and held it idly. “Just to keep him from doing something foolish.”

The two of them looked at Harvey while discussing him.

“Think he’d zip his lip if we cut him in?”

Darrell studied Harvey’s sweaty face and imploring eyes. “I’m not sure.”

“Then don’t you think you’d better make sure?”

Darrell visibly nerved himself, then plugged Harvey between the eyes.

“Did you hit the master switch to shut off all the alarms?”

The Joker’s question broke Darrell out of a trance. Darrell shook himself. “Haven’t had a chance yet.”

“Now’s your chance.”

Darrell moved jerkily to a switch and hit it. He turned to the Joker with a feverish smile. “Now you’re all set.”

“Not quite.”

Darrell looked puzzled.

The Joker brought Harvey’s gun up and plugged Darrell between the eyes. “I advised you to make sure. I like to practice what I preach.”

He kicked each body to make sure no life stirred, then pressed Harvey’s gun into Harvey’s hand and left to get on with the heist.

The Joker and his crew rode to the top floor. Metrognome ran ahead opening doors with the master key and wedging them ajar, then wedged the stairwell door open and moved down to the next floor to do the same . . . all the long way to the ground floor. In one office, Leo found a copying machine and made copies of the list of combinations. These he distributed to the others, who split into teams and opened vaults and poured out all the gems onto the floor. Last came the hose team, who lifted down the pleated hose on the hallway fire stanchion and stretched it and turned on the water and sluiced the glittering litter out of the offices and down the hallway to the stairwell and waterblasted it all down.

So it went, the gems pouring into a great sieve Metrognome set up at the very bottom of the stairway. Every so often he had to scoop out buckets of gems and carry them out and dump them into the false body of the fire truck.

Finally, they were done; they were all on the ground floor, emptying the last of the gems from the sieve. Not quite done; before they left the thoroughly looted Emerald Center, the Joker turned Metrognome upside down to shake emeralds from his pockets.

As the fire truck pulled around the corner, Leo, acting as tillerman, had a bad shock. His last look back had shown him the Batmobile whizzing to a stop at the Emerald Center’s entrance. Evidently Batman had just missed glimpsing the fire truck, or had not as yet made the connection, for there was no immediate pursuit and they made a clean getaway. But the close call left Leo shaken.

Dr. Amicia Sollis tried to console Bruce Wayne. “Don’t blame yourself, Bruce. It’s Batman’s fault they got away. If only he had responded to word of your hunch sooner . . .”

It did comfort him that Amicia faulted not him but the man of action. But he did blame himself. If only he had slipped away from Amicia on some pretext, changed immediately to Batman without going through the rigmarole of getting Commissioner Gordon to get in touch with Batman, he might have reached the Emerald Center in time to foil the Joker. Instead, the Joker had made a mockery of him, stolen billions in gems, and left two good men dead.

“Listen to what just came in over the tips hotline, B.M., and see what you make of it.” Commissioner Gordon played a tape recording over the direct line to Batman.

A hoarse, muffled voice said, “If a guy who could hand you the Joker was ready to deal for witness protection, would you—uh-oh.” Then, more loudly, “Well, if a half hour is the fastest you can deliver a pizza, forget it.” The sound of a phone slamming down. And that was it.

“Well, B.M.?”

Batman smiled grimly. “Sounds to me as if the subject of the tip walked in on the tipster. Let’s hope the Joker didn’t hear him and he lives to call again.”

“Exactly our thought.”

“Sorry I can’t be more helpful, C.G.”

“Maybe next time.”

“Maybe next time,” Batman echoed.

The Joker put an arm around Leo’s shoulder and grew fondly reminiscent, his eyes focusing on a time in the past.

“Once, years ago, this surly waiter slighted me, gave me really abominable service. Yet, when it came time to tip him, I pressed a G-note into his hand and closed his fingers on the money. Oh, what a lovely smile cracked his face as he bowed me out. Of course, when he opened his hot little hand after I had gone, it was empty. Same applies to Batman. He may come closer and closer till he thinks he has me in the hollow of his hand, but when he opens his hand I’m not there.”

“You said a mouthful, Boss.”

The Joker turned his grin on Leo. “Leo, let’s go for a ride.” He felt Leo stiffen under his enfolding arm, and from Leo there came the gurgling of stomach acid. The Joker gave him a reassuring pat. “For pizza, of course. What else?”

The moving sign around the Tempo Triangle Building carried a new unauthorized and unpaid-for message:

SHOT HAS HIS NUMBER ON IT: 037

Bruce Wayne scratched his head. He felt sure Joker meant the message for Batman’s eyes—but what person did
his
refer to?

Did
037
tie in with Roman A. Clay in any way?

He passed the buck to his subconscious while he shaved for a dinner date with Amicia. Then, as he stared in the mirror, razor poised, he found himself mentally turning
037
over into its mirror image:
LEO.

That could not refer to Batman; the Joker had no way of knowing Batman’s birth sign—and in any case, Wayne was a Gemini. Nor could it refer to Clay; Wayne had flown out to Clay’s big birthday bash last April, which made Clay an Aries.

Again he bucked it to his subconscious. And again he froze midstroke.

Leo
and
shot
meshed in his mind.
Leo
meant
lion
, and when the Gotham Zoo had built a modern cageless replica of the veldt, the abandoned old lion house had become a shooting gallery where addicts smoked crack and freebased cocaine.

He reached for the everyday phone to bring dilettante Bruce Wayne’s deductions to Commissioner Gordon’s attention, that Gordon might pass it on to Batman. He stopped himself. He would not make the same mistake twice. This time, no rigmarole. He wiped shaving foam from his face and transformed himself at once into the man of action.

Over his shoulder he told his gentleman’s gentleman Alfred to convey Bruce Wayne’s regrets to Dr. Amicia Sollis. Batman made for the Batmobile.

Too early? Or too late?

The place seemed deserted. Something had scared the regulars away.

Then his gaze picked out of the shadows their vile leavings—empty crack vials and reused needles, like medical waste washed up on one of Gotham’s beaches. There was no smell of lion, there was smell of evil.

Not too early. Too late.

What at first seemed a black plastic bag of cans salvaged for refund proved a body.

Lightly, lest a secreted needle prick his finger. Batman frisked the body. Carefully, he fished out a wallet.

His penlight picked out a driver’s license photo that matched the corpse’s crooked-nosed face. The license gave the man a name: Larsen E. Oliphant.

LEO.

Batman did not know why, but he felt certain he had heard this man’s voice on Gordon’s tape. There was no way of proving that. One day, perhaps, forensics would be able to make a corpse’s vocal cords tell how they sounded in life. But now the voice was still and the message forever untold. Batman shook his head.

Commissioner Gordon passed the autopsy results on to Batman.

“The man had a long record. It ground to a halt with a bad needle.”

“You’re saying he OD’d on cocaine?”

“That I am.”

“Thanks, C.G.”

“Any ideas, B.M.?”

“I’m thinking about cocaine.”

“The Property Office heist?”

“That—and the word
cocaine
itself.”

He rang off before Gordon could question him about what he had not yet gotten a good handle on.

JOKER TO BATMAN: LET’S SCHMOOZE

In spite of himself, Bruce Wayne almost laughed. But the Joker’s jokes had a way of turning dead serious—with the emphasis on dead. So Wayne gave the message crawling around the Tempo Triangle Building serious consideration.

To schmooze
was slang for to gossip or to chat. Schmoozing required a time and a place. Where and when were the Joker and Batman to meet for their schmooze?

Time weighed on Wayne’s mind. Midnight tomorrow was the Joker’s deadline for the ransoming of Roman A. Clay and the two models. According to Gordon, the billion dollars in cash had been raised and sat awaiting instructions for the drop. Could the “schmooze” be the Joker’s way of calling for a meet to establish the conditions for the drop? Was Batman to be the intermediary? Or did the Joker hope to keep him on the sidelines by leading him to believe he would be the intermediary—while quite other measures went forward?

Wayne set his jaw. Batman would not be sidelined. He would go about his business. If the Joker wanted to “schmooze,” the Joker would have to be more forthcoming with the particulars of where and when.

Amicia was secure enough in her own selfhood and sense of worth that she did not lay guilt on Bruce. She understood. She would have expected
him
to understand if circumstances had compelled
her
to break a date.

So they met again without strain—though a curious smile played around her lips as he wasted no time in picking her brains.

“What do fun mirror, loop the loop, and shooting gallery add up to?”

“Amusement park,” she said, squeezing lemon into her tea.

“And with a ton of cocaine on the loose, what amusement park do you think of?”

“Cockaigne Island,” she said, stirring in two spoonfuls of sugar.

“What can you tell me about Cockaigne?”

“On hot summer days, a million Gothamites head for the two-mile strip of beach and boardwalk, because it’s jampacked with funhouses, bathhouses, freak shows, roller coasters, hotdog stands, and amusements of all kinds.”

“I meant, what can you tell me about the original Cockaigne?”

She arranged her thoughts. “The notion of The Land of Cockaigne, or Cockayne,”—she gave him both spellings—“goes back to a thirteenth-century French poem. Scholars link the name to the Latin word
coquere,
from a word meaning ‘cake,’ so that ‘The Land of Cockaigne’ means ‘The Land of Cakes.’ It’s a fantasy place, a land of plenty, where the rivers ran with wine, the houses were made of gingerbread and barley sugar, the streets were paved with pastry, and shops charged nothing for their goods. Buttered larks fell from the sky and roast fowl walked around, like Li’l Abner’s shmoos, begging to be eaten—”

They looked at one another.

LET’S SCHMOOZE.

A chill traveled Wayne’s spine. Joker was inviting him to Cockaigne Island Amusement Park. Wayne smiled grimly. Well, they would see which one was the shmoo.

The Joker was testing his skill at the shooting gallery booth on the boardwalk. He knocked down every duck as it passed. Then he took out a hand mirror, pointed the rifle backward over his shoulder, and popped the toy balloons of a kid strolling by behind him.

The kid cried.

The Joker giggled. Then for a fleeting instant a lost look came into his eyes. “I was once that little kid.” Then he giggled again and the lost look was as if it had never been.

He glanced across at the photo booth. On sudden impulse, he said, “I’m feeling sentimental. I’d like a group photo as a souvenir. We won’t have time later—we’ll be too busy collecting the ransom, and then right after that we’ll be splitting up. So let’s take it now.”

The Joker and Gang crowded into the tiny booth for a group photo. Then, yielding to the clamor of his henchpersons, the Joker posed alone for a portrait.

He settled himself, reached out to the button, then shook his head. “No, that’s my good side.” He faced the other way,
then
pressed the button.

An hour before midnight, a salt wind blew in from the darkening sea. Taking over as people drifted toward the subway entrances and bus stops, sea gulls and pigeons marched and countermarched upon the damp boardwalk, pecking up crumbs of popcorn and taffy and cotton candy. A few diehard loners and couples patronized the attractions or huddled on benches. To the one or two people who noticed Batman at all, he was only another shadow.