CHAPTER 14
Nowhere in Gotham City could you find anything quite like the Iceberg Lounge. It was in a two-storey, 12,800-square-foot building that had once housed the Lion’s Den, a club filled with cages that the previous owner had actually filled with lions. The cages were still in place when the bank foreclosed on the place, and it was said that the new owner had used them to house his parrots, larks, owls, canaries, robins, hawks, and ravens. Upstairs, where it was kept near freezing cold and demanded guests to be decked out in fur coats—though the hippest couples wore next to nothing, preferring the invigorating feel of the cold touch to their skin—there were a pair of seals kept on a small island at the center of a room bathed in blue light and surrounded by moats of flowing water.
On an island across from the seals were eight gigantic emperor penguins, each one standing a whopping four feet tall and quaking to themselves. No, penguins don’t quack, Gordon thought, walking up the steps. Ducks quack, geese honk, so what do penguins do? Bray?
The atmosphere of the club on the lower level was a perfectly elegant nightclub, with only a watery blue light cast across the entire dining room and entertainment floor to suggest the “cool” things waiting upstairs. It was hip, all right, with just enough subtle, innovative touches to attract the young crowd while not expelling the old. The sign marquee outside read: THE ICEBERG, NO COOLER JOINT IN GOTHAM.
Gordon hadn’t been to a scene like this one since the days when he and Barbara had started dating, but he knew that the kind of people attracted to a place like this preferred things relaxed and low-key, so showing up unannounced and with two uniform police officers in tow was, without a doubt, the “squarest” move he could pull to these patrons.
As they ascended the spiral staircase, Gordon and his men could see across the entire bottom level. An ensemble jazz band called The Hurlihees were playing tonight. The music was light and lilting. A tall, skinny bald man was on double bass, wearing sunglasses like everyone else though the room was dark enough. He was very animated, while the rest of the rhythm section were very subdued, sitting behind him in an even deeper darkness that made scant apparitions of them. A sax player took turns on stage with the trumpet player; they seemed to switch in and out at random, totally improvised—true jazz. The poster on the wall outside of the nightclub had advertised this event as “the coolest club hosting the coolest band.”
Below, the music stopped for a moment so that a man on a microphone could announce, “All right, you cooooooool hepcats, we’re gonna clear the floor right now for a moment. That’s it, everybody off the floor. We’re gonna spice it up just a notch and let one couple—just one hip couple—take the floor. It can be anyone, any volunteers who think they’re cooooooool enough to mesmerize us all.”
The tempo of the music picked up as one bold and barefoot couple dared to take to the center of the rotating ice floor.
At the top of the stairs, Gordon paused to take in the scenery. A few people were splashing in the near-freezing water in the two large pools that housed the seals and the penguins. Gordon could see his own breath up here, so he could only imagine how cold those waters were. There were three scantily-clad women walking around stripper poles, though they weren’t quite dancing like strippers; they just walked around and around, intermittently blowing kisses at all the patrons.
He walked over, stepping around a woman with black hair covered in glitter—a tattoo on her back said BLUE JAY, with a picture of a Blue Jay spreading its wings just beneath it.
“I’m looking for Oswald Cobblepot,” he said to her. But there was so much laughter and splashing around and penguins braying that his words were lost. The woman danced closer to him, and reached out to touch his trench coat. Gordon backed away and repeated himself, but the woman just looked at him as though she were in a trance and continued dancing. He stepped up to her, put his lips next to her ear, and shouted, “The Penguin!”
This jolted her out of both the trance and the dance. She paused, looking dumbfounded for a beat, even hurt. Then, she pointed.
At the far end of the room, on the other side of the island where the seals flopped around in the water, there was a cluster of people standing around a booth that looked purposefully secreted in the corner. The hippest of the hipsters, Gordon thought, looking at their various styles of tuxedo and glittery dresses. The elite clubbers. Too cool to hang with the others, they need their privacy. Gordon wondered what other things they might require privacy for.
He hadn’t come to arrest Oswald Cobblepot—he couldn’t, because so far he’d just been named as a person of interest, and by a criminal whose word didn’t carry much weight with the law yet. Calabria might’ve only been throwing out a name that meant nothing, just enough to get Gordon off his case and ensure he got the deal he wanted from GCPD and the feds.
As Gordon approached, he could make out someone telling the assembled crowd a story that was getting chuckles. “—and so I told him that, in order to remove himself from deplorable situations such as he’d found himself in, he should perhaps refrain from indulging in matters of the flesh so often, especially with a woman whose age you’re unaware of, and whose father happens to be sitting on the Board of Directors.”
A wave of laughter rippled through the assembled crowd at the booth.
“Oswald Cobblepot?” he said at them. The officious tone he carried killed the cool vibe all at once, and faces looked back at Gordon and his officers with barely veiled disgust. A few of them looked him up and down, surveying his clothes, and seemed to find his trench coat distasteful.
Five people parted, and he saw a large, circular table made of glass with water and fish swimming inside of it. At the other side sat a rotund little fellow, dressed up in an unwrinkled tux with white gloves and a quellazaire (cigarette holder) about ten inches long in between his fingers, a martini glass half raised to his lips at an angle that was accommodating to the unusually long and crooked nose that extended from his face. His skin was pallid; he didn’t get nearly enough sun. There were two bodyguards, both of which looked half again as big as the biggest police officer on the entire force, and they stood on either side of him like two great stone pillars.
“Oswald Cobblepot?” he repeated.
“Wraaaaack! Cobblepot! Cobblepot! Wraaaaaaaaaaack!” said the fat little man, squawking like a bird, and the crowd howled with laughter at what Gordon could only imagine was an inside joke known only to the Iceberg’s elite.
“Are you Oswald Cobblepot?” Gordon pressed.
The laughter died down. The fat man reached up to wipe the tears from his face, and said, “Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry. Pray tell, who’s asking?”
“I’m Commissioner James Gordon,” he said, and glanced behind him. “These are Officer Blakely and—”
“All right, all right, that’s enough. What do you want?”
Straight to business, like he’s done this before. He’s not even afraid of police suddenly showing up in his club. That was telling to Gordon. “Mind if we have a word with you?” He looked around at the assembly. “In private?” he added.
“About what?”
“Gaspare Calabria and Victor Hughes.”
Cobblepot sighed and slowly put the quellazaire to his lips, and took a toke. He looked around at his audience. “Friends, Romans, countrymen, would you all please excuse us for a moment? Though I’ve enjoyed our intellectual persiflage, and though I find law enforcement as much a buzzkill as the rest of you do, I am more concerned about my reputation, and would rather you all discuss the implications of this meeting behind my back as you’re all inclined to do. Though I generally proscribe that kind of behavior, you’re only human.”
They all started to file out, and one of the women kissed him on the cheek before whispering something in his ear, and he nodded. Before they had all left, though, Cobblepot shouted suddenly “Wraaaaaaaaack wrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaack!” much to the delight of his retreating fans.
Gordon ignored the laughter, and looked down on the little man.
“Sorry about that,” Cobblepot sniggered. “It’s an inside joke. Please, have a seat, Commissioner. Do you or your men want drinks?”
“No, thank you,” Gordon said, taking a seat opposite Cobblepot.
“Oh, that’s right! You’re on duty. Well, what about something to eat? My chefs here are the best in Gotham City, I can pretty much make you a bet on that without fear of losing any cash on it.”
“No, thank you, Mr. Cobblepot. And may I ask your bodyguards leave us alone for a moment?”
“Why? I’m not under arrest, am I? I haven’t been read my Miranda.” While his words were of light humor, his eyes were shrewd, like a longtime business professional’s.
“I’m not here to arrest you, Mr. Cobblepot. I’m here to ask you a few questions. Depending on how you answer them, I may need you to come down to the station to clear a few things up.”
“Uh-huh,” said Cobblepot, puffing out smoke. He glanced behind him, and waved at the bodyguard. The two of them took a few steps away, but Gordon noticed that they didn’t go nearly far enough to out of earshot. “What’s this about?” asked the Bird Man.
“Do you know Gaspare Calabria and Victor Hughes?” Gordon asked, taking out his pen.
“Yeah, I know ’em,” he said, removing the cigarette from his quellazaire and setting another one in it. He held it up, and one of the bodyguards walked over to light it for him, then retreated a few steps again. “Know ’em, but don’t particularly care for them.”
“How do you know them?” Gordon asked, pushing his glasses up.
“They’ve been in and out of here before. They made some trouble with a waitress of mine once, and I had them escorted out. Victor also once tried to get an illegal poker game going in one of the private rooms of the ’Berg here, but I put the kibosh on that quick,” he said, taking a long, long toke and blowing smoke out ostentatiously. “I run a respectable business here, Commissioner.”
“I haven’t implied otherwise,” he said. “Were you aware that both Calabria and Hughes were arrested in connection with the deaths of the family of Patrick Tralley, the man who walked into the Muslim Center three days ago and blew himself up?”
“I read about it in the Informer. Nasty business,” he said, taking another toke. “What’s this got to do with me?” He blew the smoke into his martini glass, watching it come out in a haze like from a sulfur pit.
“One of them is claiming that you handed over the contact information of the person who orchestrated those crimes.”
“Is that what they said?” He scoffed, and smoke shot out of his nostrils like a dragon. “Did they also tell you that I hand out numbers from one person to another about three dozen times a night, and that it’s rarely between individuals I’ve ever met?”
On one of the islands behind him, Gordon could hear the emperor penguins honking angrily. At least, it sounded angry.
“And why is that, Mr. Cobblepot?”
“Because I get handed business cards from businessmen and businesswomen constantly. Here, look at this,” he said, reaching casually into his coat pocket and withdrawing a stack of business cards three times as thick as Gordon’s wallet and bound in a rubber band. He tossed them onto the table, where they bounced across to Gordon, who lifted them for inspection. “And that’s just from this week,” Cobblepot said. “Come back next week and I’ll have a whole new stack, without a single card repeated.”
“Why do people give you all these business cards?”
“Because I know people. I’m in, I’m hip, I’m ‘in the know,’ as they say. Because I came into Gotham City on money passed down from my family, who were also business people, and with their connections, as well. Because I paid for this building in cash and set the nightclub up all without having to put a single charge on my credit card. Because I’m rich, Commissioner. Everyone wants my business, or wants me to recommend them to other business associates of mine. And so, I help them out. In the capriciousness of my youth, my parents managed to hammer it into me that the key to business was networking, and thank God I listened.”
“Do you remember giving Gaspare Calabria a phone number to call?”
“I do.”
“And do you remember who gave you that contact information?”
“I do.”
“Who was it?”
“His name was Nygma. Edward Nygma. N-Y-G-M-A.”
“What did he look like?” Gordon asked, writing that down.
“Tall. Well, everyone’s tall to me, but this guy was especially so. Pale. Kind of thin, but not skinny. Kind of slim-athletic. Dark hair, a receding hairline from a sharp widow’s peak. He wore a green jacket with an attached hoodie, and a silver pin on the right breast of his jacket in the shape of a question mark. But I remember him most because he had style, some real swagger, like how he walked with a cane even though he didn’t seem to need it.” He took a toke, and blew out smoke. “Any more than that, I can’t tell you.”
“Where and when did you meet this person?” Gordon asked, jotting it all down. Behind him, one of the penguins squawked or honked, and one of the seals was crying out for a fish that someone was dangling in front of it.
“Right here in my club, say about…ohhhhh…six weeks ago?”
“You’re sure about that timeframe?”
Cobblepot shrugged, taking another toke. “Pretty sure. I have security cameras all over this place, and my people don’t erase the tapes for three months, so you might catch a glimspe of him if you review the tapes. The only problem is, I met him just once, and it was outside. He walked right up to me and handed me his card, and asked me to put it in the hands of the new Calabria in town.”
“That’s all he said?”
“That’s it, and then he vanished.”
“And he never came back to this nightclub ever again?”
“Not that I saw,” Cobblepot said, sighing and taking a sip of his martini. He yawned. He was growing bored of this.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“How would Nygma know that you could put his contact information into Gaspare Calabria’s hands?”
“Could’ve been any number of reasons,” Cobblepot said, shrugging. He took a sip of his martini and smiled over at one of the female animal handlers tossing fish to the seals. “Maybe he had seen Calabria coming in and out of the ’Berg, but didn’t want to make contact himself because of what a dangerous dude people say Calabria is.”
“Calabria said that you were an information broker, that you offer hookups, connections, for some of the, ah, less reputable people in Gotham.”
Cobblepot took another toke. “Commissioner, I’m a businessman, and sometimes I shuffle around names, dates, places, phone numbers. I introduce people. If that means I’m an information broker then so is the telephone book, so is the admin for an online chat forum.”
“You don’t think it’s strange that a man who’s very likely about to be charged with aiding a terrorist got his information for that job through you?”
“Oh, I think it’s strange, all right,” said the fat man, blowing another smoke ring, “but I get all sorts of clientele in here—from college students to the Molehill Mob to Dreaded Sun, though I try and chase the latter groups off whenever I see them—so I don’t think it’s conclusive of anything. These days I can count on two hands the number of solid, decent people in Gotham and still have fingers left. I think you know that better than anybody. So odds are most of the people I deal with every day are not the most honest people, but I can’t prove that, any more than you can prove I’m some sort of underworld fiend, as I suppose you’re suggesting. And if I turned away everyone because they are likely a creep, then I wouldn’t have anyone dancing to the cool grooves of my club, now would I, Commissioner? What kind of club would I have if I exiled people without evidence of their misdeeds? Heavens, where would we be as a society?”
Gordon looked at the Penguin at length. The Penguin, he thought, appraising the tuxedo he was nearly bursting out of and that bent beak of his. Fits. “Mr. Cobblepot, is there anything else you can think to tell me? Anything at all that might help us?”
The fat man shrugged, and said, “Sorry, Commissioner, I’ve told you all I know.”
Gordon wrote his number down, and handed it to Cobblepot. “That’s my personal cell phone number. Should anything pop into your head, anything at all, call me. I’ll have some of my officers come around either tonight or tomorrow to get some of those security tapes. I trust your people will be accommodating?”
“You bet.” Cobblepot folded the paper and stuck in his pocket. It’ll be tossed in the garbage by the end of the night, Gordon thought. Then, on the heels of that, Or maybe not. If he’s an information broker to people in the underworld, he might keep the number to try and use me.
Something didn’t sit right with Gordon about this place. The atmosphere was just perfect for getting lost in, and the owner of the place hadn’t flinched when the police commissioner and two officers walked in, as though he’d had experience facing off with the police before. Most people would have quailed, but not him, not the little Penguin.
He stood up to leave. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Cobblepot,” he said, and turned. “We’ll be in touch.”
“I hope not too much. I have a business to run. Black doesn’t look right in my club unless it’s a tux.”
The crowd had grown since they came in, so they had to go around the center stage to another area of the Iceberg Lounge, one where patrons danced barefoot on the floor made of solid ice, like an ice rink. To keep indoor ice in here all day every day must cost him a fortune, Gordon thought, considering the refrigerant, chillers, brinewater solution, and specialized underground pipes that would be needed to keep it all going.
As soon as they stepped outside, Gordon said to Officer Blakely, “Who’s at the station tonight? Holloway?”
“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Holloway was there when I left.”
“I’ll call him later. I want some kind of watch on this whole club. This place is dirty.”
“How do you know, sir?”
“Men that confident in front of three policemen only get elevated in society one way.”
* * *
THREE DAYS AFTER Bruce had decided to continue with his work as Alfred had suggested, the last piece of the SC-220 Bat Hawk finally arrived. It was the biggest piece, and it came early in the morning on an 18-wheeler with the sign saying WIDE LOAD across the front and back. The package had been signed off on, and dropped off on a trailer in the shed around the back of Wayne Manor’s gymnasium. Later that day, Bruce had used a tractor to drive it out to the door to his “bomb shelter” that would soon become his helipad.
“You lost an entire helicopter,” Bruce was saying to one of the supervisors in charge of shipping and handling for Wayne Enterprises. He had the man on the phone, admonishing him even as he hit the switch on the remote that would take the final piece of the Bat Hawk down to sit with the others, where he would finish assembling it. “How does that happen, Mr. Owen?”
“Mr. Wayne, I assure you, we will find where the problem started and locate the helicopter,” said Owen, who would be standing confused in front of a shipping and receiving computer board in India.
Bruce didn’t want the man to feel utterly guilty. After all, Bruce was allowing him to take the blame unjustly. But as long as he and Lucius never let it go on the man’s permanent record, and as long as they kept paying him what he was rightly worth, then it should be okay. It might stress Mr. Trevor Owen out over the next couple of weeks, but a pay raise at the end of the month would leave him both dubious and grateful, Bruce wagered. “We have insurance for things like this,” Bruce sighed. He was speaking to Mr. Owen on a handsfree phone, and tearing into the large crate with a crowbar—the thing was about ten feet tall, six feet wide and four feet long. “But the government will eventually want answers come tax season. I’ll handle it. Rather, Mr. Fox will handle it. We’ve already reported it missing to the authorities. Try not to worry about it for now.”
“Uh…yes, sir. But I promise you, we will find the Bat Hawk.”
No, you won’t, he thought, looking at the thing before him. He tore off more planks to get at the large amounts of packaging foam and balloons. Payment hadn’t been bad for all the shipping, since most of the pieces were labeled as minivan parts and his trusted receivers at AG International and the rail yards of Wayne Shipping had made sure they got shuffled around without closer inspection.
“I value your commitment, Mr. Owen. And though I’m upset, you’re still an asset to the company, never forget that.” Bruce disconnected the call, and tossed the phone to Alfred, who was walking beside him and rolling the giant toolbox up to the workstation.
Hands on hips, Bruce stepped back and looked at the project. All of the various pieces were arrayed around him on engine hoists—the turbine itself, along with the portions of the airframe and six-bladed pusher-type propeller, and the onboard systems package which included FLIR, an anti-ice system, particle separator, integral rescue hoist, color weather radar, four surveillance/countersurveillance drones, INS/GPS/Doppler navigation, an IR jamming unit, and LARS range/steering radio. There were also two specialized four-bladed coaxial composite tail rotors, which would make the aircraft quieter in flight.
Once assembled, the Bat Hawk would be one of the most advanced aircrafts in the world, with speeds up to 240 knots, while still capable of nimble movements and sharp turns. It had a tandem cockpit for a maximum two-man crew, with a tailwheel-type landing gear arrangement similar to the Apache helicopter. Bruce would make a few modifications so that, if the chopper was ever captured on film, it wouldn’t quite look like WE’s Bat Hawk model.
Most of the helicopter was already assembled in large chunks—that had been part of WE’s big idea to the U.S. government, that of a helicopter that was both lightweight and well-armored, yet could be broken down easily whenever there was need of repairs, which was a common occurrence in areas like the Middle East, one that soldiers and engineers were becoming frustrated with because sand so frequently mucked up the works. The Bat Hawk had been meant to make their work easier, compartmentalizing certain pieces while also giving something no helicopter had ever had before: pilotable ejection seats.
“Time to get to work,” he said, going over to a set of large pneumatic tools, “or else all those piloting lessons are gonna go to waste.” A team of three working together with the right equipment could assemble the entire Bat Hawk in twenty minutes, each large piece “snapping” into place easily, making it completely flight-ready. However, one man working by himself could take a whole day, especially since he wasn’t entirely familiar with aircraft assembly. But, Bruce was very good at becoming an expert at something he needed to become an expert in fast.
“Why such a hurry to finish this now, Master Bruce?”
He used the remote to move the chunk containing the motor and drive train. “Because, it’s getting tougher to drive around in a Batcycle or batmobile,” he said. “I’ve pushed the limits far enough. You should’ve seen the look on that officer’s face, the one that solved the last riddle at the rail yard. He was prepared to arrest me on sight. If it hadn’t been for Gordon he would have.” He shrugged. “Besides, it makes me faster, I don’t have to worry about traffic or buildings, and if there are more riddles coming, and if the Riddler abducts two victims at once like he did before, then who knows, I may need to be on opposite ends of Gotham within a short timeframe.”
“I feel the need to remind you, sir, that the Policeman’s Ball is two days away,” Alfred said.
“I know, and I intend to be there.” If for no other reason than to make another appearance as Bruce Wayne and make a fool out of myself, he thought. These days, every action he took was designed to ensure that his Batman project could continue unhindered. “Hand me that socket wrench there, would you, Alfred?”
The butler obliged, and asked, “What about the Falcones? What about Nate?”
“I’m gonna go down by Glen’s Bakery, hopefully tonight or tomorrow night. It’s been a few days, so hopefully Gordon’s found something.”
“And if he hasn’t?”
Bruce looked at him, and smiled. “Then it’s back to alleys and streets. Pound the pavement a little, give them all a spook, and remind them that I’m still out there.”
Alfred nodded. “As always, be careful, sir.”
Bruce looked at the main portion of the Bat Hawk’s airframe, and set to work. “You know it.”
* * *
ON THE FOURTH day of the Joker trial, after days of hearing from Dr. Bates and others from Arkham Asylum, the prosecution finally started sloughing through witnesses to some of the Joker’s heinous acts.
Roy Higgens was there, ready just in case he got the call, but otherwise watching along with the families of other victims. At times, testimony seemed to crawl by. Nothing approached the level of intensity that the testimony of Dr. Quinzel had created.
There was a bit if drama surrounding a pair of jurors that had to be excused. The first incident was with a juror sick with food poisoning and had to be dismissed for a day. The next day, the juror had been permanently excused and an alternate juror was brought in. The second juror had been excused because a close family member had suddenly died. Another backup juror was brought in, and the trial proceeded with only a mild hiccup.
The two changing jurors had been unusual, especially to have happened within a 48-hour period. That night, Roy had gone online to read the comments section of various news sites, and found that he wasn’t alone in thinking the juror turnover was suspicious. Commissioner Gordon had appeared on television, saying that his officers had assured him that every precaution had been taken in protecting both the identities and the lives of the jurors in the Joker trial. Mayor Walden, no friend to any police officer that Roy had ever met, had gone on television to talk about modern terrorism in the U.S., and in Gotham in particular. He had spoken about the beginning of the Joker trial and how glad he was that it was moving along, and quashed rumors that the jurors were being “gotten” to.
Walden had also taken the time to discuss new legislation that would increase security in Gotham City. How’re you gonna do that without cops? Roy had thought while watching the TV in the lobby of the courthouse between sessions. He knew his old friends at the precinct were hurting right now for good help, and Roy, damn his legs, couldn’t be there for them.
Roy sat there, on that fourth day of the trial, waiting to be called. He had been assured by the prosecutor’s office this morning that he would be called. But things didn’t always go as planned in trials; he knew that from his time as an officer testifying in countless cases. Bench discussions were called, objections were made, the judge would ask that questions be rephrased, witnesses would be unclear in their testimony or droned on and on, the prosecutors would ask for clarification for the jurors’ sakes, evidence would be shown to the jurors, and sometimes they would need time to pass it around amongst themselves, looking it over. If all of this piled up, it could push testimonies to another day entirely.
And if the security behind the trial thinks that the Joker or anyone still loyal to him is trying to shuffle around jurors in order to force a mistrial, then the security measures going on behind the scene will only further screw with the scheduling.
All eyes were on Gotham City these days, and no one, especially Mayor Walden, wanted to lose face right now.
Roy considered the mayor. He’d heard that Commissioner Gordon and Mayor Walden weren’t exactly communicating well. That had put a hampering on all investigations, since manpower was so scarce and the Joker had taken the lives of some of the best cops. At the thought of all the injustice, Roy’s right hand reflexively clenched. Dark thoughts swirled around him. He thought about the slowness of this trial, the attempts by Drs. Quinzel and Bates to get the Joker admitted as a patient to Arkham instead of an inmate at Blackgate Penitentiary. He thought about how, someday, perhaps a decade or two down the road, the clown could actually be set free again.
Free! he thought. Not if I can help it…not if I have my chance to have a say.
“The state calls Roy Higgens to the stand,” said Kingsley.
Her voice suddenly broke through the miasma of his thoughts. Roy looked up, saw a few faces turn towards him. It’s time, he thought. It’s time. Finally. He put his hands on his wheels, and started down the aisle. A bailiff stepped up to open the small swinging door for him, an obstacle that wouldn’t have been an obstacle at all a couple of years ago, before the clown had…
As Roy rolled up towards the witness stand, there was a moment where he made eye contact with him. It was only a glance, not one of recognition. Those dull yet humored eyes showed no memory of Roy Higgens. It was as if they were strangers, as if the clown hadn’t done this to him, and was wondering who had let a cripple into the courtroom.
Roy couldn’t surmount the single step, much less fit his whole wheelchair inside the witness box, so he had to park himself in front of the witness stand.
The clerk approached with the Bible, and he put his hand on it. “Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” she asked.
“I do.” Finally, he thought. The clown gets to hear my voice. He doesn’t even know who I am. But he will soon. As Kingsley approached, Roy made his move.
The wheelchair made him unsuspecting. He was a cripple now, no harm to anyone anymore. And he was a cop, and a permanently handicapped one at that. All the security guards at the courthouse doors knew him, and felt sympathy, knowing full-well that it could have been them in the police car that night when the Joker fired those missiles. He was a victim, and therefore even those that didn’t know him had sympathized.
Roy chose this particular wheelchair for the look and design of the left and drive assists. The left one was hollow on the inside, made for adjustability, and easily held a small clip. And a small clip would be all he needed for a Glock Pocket 10. The clip was in case he needed to reload, but Roy didn’t think he would need to.
He’d waited for his moment at the witness stand, for he was now close enough to hit his target without others being in his way. Four rows back in a wheelchair had put too many heads in his way, and someone in the crowd would have tried to stop him, and would’ve been close enough to do it. Now all he needed to worry about was backstop, the people and things behind his target. But as a cop he knew how to make sure he hit his target center mass.
As Kingsley started to ask her first question, Roy finished making his move. Having placed his hands exactly where he’d trained to, Roy reached beneath his seat and tore at the Velcro. The Glock Pocket 10 dropped into his hand, he pulled it up, aimed at the defendant, and fired. After eleven years on the police force, after all that training, he would be surprised if he missed.
He was surprised, but not because he missed, he didn’t. Roy was surprised that, just a second before he pulled the trigger, just before the gasps from the audience went up at once, the clown looked right at him, directly into his eyes, and held up a thumb and forefinger in a mimed handgun, and winked at Roy just as he took the shot, the first of which hit the Joker cleanly center mass.
There was screaming, lots of it. But above all the din and the clamber, one woman’s scream could be heard above all others. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” As Roy Higgens’s chair was toppled over by the bailiffs tackling him, he saw Dr. Harleen Quinzel leaping and clawing her way towards her patient.
* * *
THE NEWS DIDN’T cover anything else that night, as one can imagine. Not only did it take up all the space on the Gotham City News channel, but the story dominated headlines across the country. Some of the headlines read, OFFICER SHOOTS THE JOKER SECONDS AFTER SWEARING IN TO TESTIFY, and JOKER RUSHED TO UNDISCLOSED HOSPITAL.
It was all the pundits could talk about that night. Questions about security at the trial were brought up again and again, with anchors asking experts what went wrong with procedure. Video of the Joker being rushed into an ambulance on a stretcher played repeatedly while journalists demanded to know who this Roy Higgens was. Citizens were interviewed in the street for their reactions to it all, and comments on the Internet were displayed all night long. The consensus seemed to be that, while most didn’t like the idea that a gun could so easily be slipped into a courtroom, people naturally had no sympathy for the Joker. Many were family members and friends of victims he’d slaughtered, and swore that, if they ever got the chance, they’d do the same thing. Some were calling Roy Higgens a hero for taking the law into his own hands, since Gotham City officials were doing their typical thing of providing mind-numbingly slow justice.
The Joker’s primary doctor at Arkham Asylum, Dr. Harleen Quinzel, could be seen in one quick video clip leaving the courthouse. She was nearly in tears, dashing to her car.
Roy Higgens was taken to an unspecified jail somewhere inside city limits, and that was all anyone knew.
Meanwhile, Theresa Fuller had been expected to give her first full interview after the terrible events that unfolded at Old Parker Station. She had finally finished telling the police all that she remembered (which wasn’t much, since she’d been beaten unconscious) and was just recovering from her injuries. She had been paid an exorbitant amount of money by GCN for her story, from her abduction to her rescue, and was slated to tell it all that night. Roy Higgens’s story, however, took precedence over even that.
Tonight, the whole world was talking about the Joker, who was suddenly dubbed the “The Clown Prince of Crime” by the Informer for no reason anyone could see other than sensationalism. And it worked. With the crime rate steadily growing, and the FBI reportedly opening more offices in Gotham, and the Riddler still on the loose, and former trusted law enforcement officials trying to murder defendants in open court, perhaps the headline on the Informer’s website quoting the old Chinese curse was justified. It read: MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES.