The Further Adventures of The Joker (60 page)

The Joker, however, wore infragoggles and spotted Batman upon his arrival at the amusement park. The infragoggles let him follow Batman’s movements easily.

From his vantage point atop the loop the loop, where he was making last-minute adjustments, the Joker gave Metrognome the high sign.

Metrognome, got up as a Gypsy fortune-teller, beckoned Batman into the tentlike booth emblazoned MME DIVINA REVEALS YOUR FATE.

Batman entered warily and quickly pierced the fortune-teller disguise. When he had untied and ungagged the Emerald Center nightguard the man had told him one of the assailants was a dwarf fireman. Batman waved away a palm reading.

“Do you have a message for me from the Joker?”

The phony fortune-teller took the joker from a deck of cards and handed it to Batman.

Batman had to bring the card near the hanging light bulb to make out the handwritten message on the face of the card.

MEET YOU IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE.

He turned to ask the fortune-teller what that meant but the fortune-teller had slipped out the back.

Batman left the booth—and bumped into Dr. Amicia Sollis.

“Batman!”

“Amicia!”

“You know me?”

Batman quickly recovered. “You’re Bruce Wayne’s friend.” He looked around. “Is he here with you?”

“No, but I suspect he’s somewhere about. At least, this is where I think he dashed off to.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I wasn’t about to let you two have all the fun.”

“It could be dangerous.”

“Isn’t that what this place is all about? Danger is part of the fun.”

Under his mask Batman made a face but he said nothing.

A calliope started up near the entrance to the Tunnel of Love.

Amicia cocked her head. “That’s odd. Why would that start up when nearly everything else is closing down?”

Batman nodded absently. “Interesting, but I have a more pressing puzzle.” He showed her the joker bearing the message MEET YOU IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE.

Amicia nodded absently. “Interesting, but the calliope is very suggestive. In Greek myth, Calliope, meaning ‘Beautiful Voice,’ was Orpheus’s mother. You’ll remember that Orpheus went down to Hades to bring his dead wife Eurydice back from the grave. He won Pluto over by playing the lyre, and Pluto let Eurydice follow him out as long as he didn’t turn around till he reached the surface. But at the last instant he looked back to make sure she was right behind him—and she became a ghost again.”

“Um,” Batman said distractedly. His glance had fallen on a pitch still open across the way. It was one in which the sucker paid to toss small footballs through miniature goalposts.

His eyes lit up. “Of course! The middle of NOWHERE is
H
!”

He strode toward the football-tossing booth and heard Amicia’s hasty heels behind him on the boardwalk.

The pitchman held out a pair of little footballs. “The dashing gentleman and the fair lady wish to try their skill? Ten throws for a dollar.”

Batman snorted. “Skill!” He said over his shoulder to Amicia, “It’s supposed to be a test of skill, but it’s really a grift. The sucker has no chance to win the tawdry merchandise offered as prizes.” He leaned over and reached below the counter. “See, the gaff is a hidden lever that narrows the goalposts so the football can’t pass through.” He worked the lever several times, then straightened and turned to confront the pitchman and modestly accept Amicia’s plaudits and then get on with the business of meeting the Joker.

But they were gone. He just caught sight of the man hurrying Amicia into the Tunnel of Love.

The calliope stepped up its steam-whistle melody as if to keep pace with Batman’s heart. By the time he reached the Tunnel of Love, the train of swan cars was already vanishing into the tunnel. Batman just made the last car.

Before the train took a curve, he made out the only others aboard—a silhouetted couple in the lead car. He recognized Amicia’s profile, and now had recognized the man’s.

The Joker!

As he caught sight of them again on the straightaways, they seemed a pair of lovebirds, and he felt something like jealousy. But quickly he told himself their closeness was one enforced by the Joker.

Batman made his way over the swaying jouncing cars toward the front of the train.

Just as he set himself to pounce on the Joker, the lights went out and the train slowed.

When they came on again, the Joker was gone and the train picked up speed.

Batman climbed in beside Amicia.

“Are you all right?”

Her eyes shone, and when she spoke he was glad to see it was with excitement rather than fear. “Yes! Where did he go to?”

Before Batman could answer, the train gave a lurch and they were in darkness again.

“I think the Joker’s switched us onto another track,” he said when he got his breath back.

“Then that was really the Joker?”

“Yes. I should’ve known better back at the football pitch. That’s where we were supposed to schmooze. But he saw you with me and was quick to take advantage. Now I have you to look out for.”

“Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

Another lurch ended the argument. The train swerved into a lighted patch.

He saw a row of wooden duck cutouts off to one side of the track and it hit him that the swan train was heading through the shooting gallery. He and Amicia were to be targets.

Just in time he winged out his bulletproof cape, shielding the two of them from the Joker’s deadly markmanship. They rode through the fire, Amicia none the worse for the ordeal, Batman sustaining bruises from bullet impact.

But the ordeal was not over. The train picked up speed again, making it too dangerous to jump off even if the narrow tunnel had permitted. They had perforce to ride on.

Again, a lurch. They had not long to wonder what track the Joker had switched them onto. The train broke out into the open and they found themselves heading upward.

They were on the Loop the Loop.

Batman was all too aware that they were not belted in or harnessed. But centrifugal force should carry them safely through the overhead curve. Unless the Joker slowed or stalled the train at the top. Batman prepared himself for that eventuality.

He drew the hook-end of his coiled steel line from his belt and held it ready, giving himself lots of slack. He was aware of Amicia watching him and he spoke honestly to her. “I think the Joker means to pull another one on us. Put your arms around my neck.”

“This isn’t the Tunnel of Love,” Amicia said. She gave a forced laugh. “Sorry, I’m just trying for lightness. I’ll hang on.”

She locked her arms around his neck. He sensed she was trying to keep it from being a choke hold.

He craned to see ahead and spotted the block the Joker had put across the rails at the very top. Just before the car hit the block, Batman swung the hook at a crosstie. He had only one shot at it, so it had to be good.

It seemed to catch and he had no choice but to act on the belief that it had caught. He thrust himself and Amicia out and away from the swan car. By the time they swung back the car had plummeted past them. He lowered them more slowly to the ground.

While he unhooked himself from the line, Amicia loosened her clutch to stand on her wobbly own. As much to keep her from dwelling on the death they had escaped and get her out of more harm’s way as to summon help, he asked her to find a phone and bring Commissioner Gordon up to date. Gordon would know what to do.

Alone, he went to track the Joker to his lair.

By now, the boardwalk was for the most part dark. Everyone, even the gulls and pigeons, had gone. But one attraction remained lit: the funhouse with its sideshow.

“Step right up, friend,” the barker said. He tore a ticket off a coil. “This one’s on the funhouse.”

The Joker.

Batman recognized him even though he had disguised himself once more.

“Joker, you’ll have to answer for what you did.”

“What I did is a question?”

Batman longed to wipe the smirk off the Joker’s face. But before Batman could move to capture him, before the Annie Oakley wafted to the ground, the Joker had backflipped from his stand and vanished inside.

Batman followed swiftly, looking out for traps.

He strode past the human oddities on display, glancing at them only just enough to make sure none was the Joker in disguise. He knew the fat man and the Siamese twins had put themselves on show, still he did not like to stare.

He had to stare at the bat with a human head that confronted him—then saw it was himself made squat in a mirror. He had come to an array of fun mirrors that formed a dead end.

Yet the Joker had passed this way. At least one of the mirrors had to be a door.

“Batman!”

Amicia’s voice, outside. He turned from the mirrors and dashed past the sideshow to the entrance.

“What is it?”

“Oh, there you are. The commissioner has already sealed off the boardwalk. But he says he can’t move his SWAT teams in as long as the Joker holds Clay and the two women as trump cards.”

“I understand, It’s just as well. This is between Batman and the Joker, and I don’t want innocent blood shed. But it goes against my grain to let him get away with the ransom, the cocaine, and the jewels. If only I could locate and free the hostages . . .”

He turned to look within. This time he let his gaze linger on the human oddities. Even if they did not find
him
something out of the ordinary, it seemed very strange that they had not reacted at all to what had been happening under their eyes.

They stood hardly moving, eyes open but unfocused. Now that he took a good look at them he saw they were drugged.

He saw more. The fat man was not a simple fat man. His banner said BALLOON MAN. And the Siamese twins were lovely enough to be models.

Batman sprang onto the platform. Close up, the features islanded in the moon face were Roman A. Clay’s. The Joker had dosed him with steroids and pumped him full of silicone. The models, if Batman had to guess, were joined by Crazy Glue.

He called down to Amicia. “Get back to Gordon. Tell him to send ambulances. We have the hostages. I’ll stand guard here till help arrives.”

She stared a moment while it dawned on her, then turned and ran.

After medics had taken Clay and the models away, Gordon was ready to move his people in.

But Batman stopped him. “Please keep everyone away. This is between Batman and the Joker.”

Gordon hesitated, then nodded. “As you wish. You’ve earned the right.” He took Amicia’s arm and gently led her out of the funhouse.

Batman waited a moment, then drew a deep breath and moved to the mirrors.

The first he tested gave to his touch. It pivoted, and he slid through a space.

And found the Joker’s loot.

Boxes of packaged cocaine labeled Cotton Candy and crates of jewels labeled Ice Cream.

But no Joker.

Batman searched the place, though there seemed no space for the Joker to be hiding in.

Somehow, the Joker had found a way out.

On one wall hung a gaudy painting signed Joker. In spite of himself, Batman had to admire the Joker’s artistry. Batman looked more closely at the abstract painting. It wasn’t a canvas. The Joker had framed his paint-spattered smock. Batman had to smile.

All business again, Batman swung the frame away from the wall. An opening, the Joker’s way out. With a grimace, Batman let the frame swing back into place.

He tensed, sensing movement behind him.

A mirror was pivoting and a figure was trying to slip out. Incredibly, the Joker
had
been hiding in here all along. For some reason, now that he had all but made his getaway, he had got stuck in the doorway.

Batman said, “Not so fast.”

The figure remained helplessly reflected in the mirror.

The Joker, all right.

But when Batman moved in to collar him, he was not the Joker. He was a dwarf made up as the Joker and elongated by the fun mirror.

“I’m not the Joker, I’m not the Joker,” he screeched. “I’m Metrognome. The Joker got away. I only wanted a few jewels.”

And it was the jewels, more than a few, that had trapped him in the doorway, for his pockets bulged with them.

The Joker had escaped.

Maybe next time.

Jangletown

Elizabeth Hand and Paul Witcover

T
he package had reached him through the usual channels. It contained a small diary, the pages filled with a cramped, unruly script. There was no name to identify an owner, and the first pages had been torn out, so that the text began in midentry, dateless—flipping ahead a few pages he saw that none of the entries were dated.

The note accompanying the diary, written in green ink, was not signed or dated either. It did not need to be. He’d been expecting a communication of some sort for days now. With a sigh, he settled more comfortably into the black leather chair, had another swallow of the hot and bitter coffee, and, as directed by the note, began to read from the beginning.

. . . but sit, man, waiting for the J to hit. Outside the big bad city, Love Me Avenue. Gotta be in the right frame of mind for that scene, no lie. Need the Doctor for that. So backpack between my legs I leaned back against one greasy, pissed-on wall checking it all out: homeboys roaming in tight packs, junkies on the nod, jittery crackheads, stumblebums seeking handouts, busloads of paleface tourists like flocks of sheep ready for shearing. And cops just itching to open fire, got that look of hate and terror in their eyes to remind me of home and Dear Old Dead Old Dad. Headphones blasting Rictus, “Serene Disdain”—oh, yeah, it was starting to come together, my own private MTV! Dude slinked over mouthing, “Sense? Sense?” And I had to laugh, ’cause like all of a sudden it’s jangle time, I mean the Doctor is IN, and that’s all the sense I need.