CHAPTER 17

Ornery commuters packed the Aparo Expressway today. Gillian Loeb Memorial Hospital was all the way across the expressway, much to the dismay of Harley, whose injured eye had her in a dismal mood.

Harley’s right eye had been patched up early that morning—it was just a corneal abrasion, but it was exquisitely painful. Her eye doctor had given her a topical antibiotic to prevent infection, and a cycloplegic to reduce the pain. Luckily, Harley had managed to get the ants out of her eye before she’d had to go digging around too much.

Even now as her cab dropped her off at the front entrance of the hospital, and while considering what she was about to do, Harley knew that she hadn’t actually had ants inside her right eye. She didn’t even have them under her skin, and voices weren’t talking to her from the walls. She knew these things, knew that her hallucinations were just that, hallucinations and nothing more. Even so, it didn’t prevent them from coming on strong.

Harley wasn’t feeling so well. She had taken her meds this morning. Aripiprazole had known side effects that included central nervous system depression ranging from mild sedation to coma. Currently, she felt in a right melancholy mood. Gone were the laughs, the humor, and all the warm feelings she’d had towards Mr. Jay, and in their place was something darker, uglier. At times, her father and her mother called to her from distant places, but she was far too unfeeling right now to truly care.

She walked through the front entrance of GL Memorial, the sliding doors warping before her, opening into a world she did not recognize for a moment before a kaleidoscope of colors settled in front of her. It was only a momentary thing. The world righted itself almost immediately as the meds kicked in again to save the day.

Harley took deep breaths and let them out slowly. Suddenly, a horn honked behind her. She almost jumped out of her skin, thinking she was about to be run over before she realized it was just the cab driver behind her. He was looking at her quite disconsolately. What’s his problem? Then, Harley remembered she hadn’t paid him, and she said, “I’m sorry.” She dug through her purse, and just handed him her credit card before walking away. He just looked at her blankly, and then drove off shaking his head ruefully.

Just inside the front door, Harley met two armed guards. They gave her a serious look, and one of them started to say something before Harley, moving with the speed of muscle memory, produced her asylum badge at once and flashed it at him like she were an officer of law. “Dr. Harleen Quinzel,” she said. “Assistant chief administrator of rehabilitations, Arkham Asylum. I’ve been assigned by the state to John Doe. I’m his personal mental healthcare doctor.”

“Sorry, doc, but nobody’s allowed to see him,” one of the guards said. “We’re checking everybody comes in or out, and unless you’re an officer or the commissioner, I can’t—.”

“I’m his healthcare provider,” she repeated. “I technically still have custody of him, since he’s still a patient of Arkham and has not yet been cleared for remittance to Blackgate Penitentiary.” Despite the lugubrious mood she was in, Harley’s understanding of her place in the world, of the rights granted her by the state and the board of the American Psychiatric Association, was still solid. Her brain felt rather…spongy these days, but that part of her identity was still rigid.

“Ma’am, we have orders from both the Chief of Police and Commissioner James Gordon,” said the second guard, backing up his pal. “No one’s allowed in or out. We can’t just allow—”

“I’m sure you’ve misunderstood what they meant by ‘no one allowed,’ Officer,” Harley said. “Here’s what I need you to do. I need you to get on the phone to your superiors and ask them what they think of you blocking the one woman who knows the most about the patient’s prior medical history, the one doctor who can communicate with the hospital staff on any and all known allergies that the patient suffers from, the only medical professional who knows of any phobias that will set him off, and the person who knows better than anyone else what behaviors will set him at ease. Okay? Can you do that for me?”

Seeing where this was going, one officer looked to the other one, and said, “I’ll escort her up, introduce her to the other doctor, what’s his name?”

“Godfried,” he said.

“Right. Godfried. C’mon, then, Dr. Quinzel,” the officer sighed. “Let’s go up and see Dr. Godfried.”

She looked at his badge, saw that his name was Officer Dennis Chambers. “Thank you, Officer Chambers. That’s very helpful.”

The elevator ride up was short. Inside the elevator car itself, there was another police officer, this one plainclothes and stern-looking. No one spoke until they were nearly to the top floor, when Officer Chambers asked, “What happened to your eye, ma’am? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“I thought there was something in my eye. I tried to get it out, and gave myself a corneal abrasion.” The truth, if minus a few details.

“Ouch,” he said. “Painful?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” she said, stepping off the elevator.

On the top floor, they went down six hallways and through three major reception areas—which each now had security checkpoints—before Officer Chambers finally brought Harley to Dr. Kevin Godfried, a gray-bearded fellow with a voluminous belly, who turned and adjusted his glasses and examined Harley as an entomologist might examine a newly-discovered genus of dragonfly. “Dr. Godfried, I’m Dr. Harleen Quinzel. How’s my patient?” She reached out her hand.

Godfried took the hand slowly, watching her carefully. Did he see it in her? Did he see the sickness? He was a man of medicine, and had probably seen a lot, so did he see this? There was a part of Harley that knew that she was sick, but hardly cared that she was sick anymore, and now only cared about covering it up. Another part of her didn’t think she was sick at all, but that she was finally waking up. “Quinzel…yes…yes, I saw you on TV. You were leaving the courthouse.”

“How is he?” she wanted to know, trying not to sound too eager. He’s not dead, she told herself. He’ll be fine.

“It was kind of touch-and-go there for a minute,” Godfried admitted. “When they first brought him here, I didn’t think he was gonna make it. But it turns out he’s actually quite the fighter.” The note he ended on suggested that he wished it wasn’t so. How many police officers had Godfried seen die in his time, only to see this John Doe survive? How disappointed must he feel? How disappointed must they all feel that he had so far managed to beat the odds?

Yes, how angry they must all be that her Mr. Jay had been remitted to Gillian Loeb Memorial Hospital, a hospital built to replace Gotham Central, which he’d destroyed himself, and named after Police Commissioner Loeb, who he’d killed himself. Yes, they all must hate her Mr. Jay a great deal.

It’s only because they don’t know him like I do. “And now?” she said.

“He’s in ICU. Under heavy guard,” he added. “But he’s taking no visitors, obviously.”

“Is he talking?”

"He’s able to talk, but he’s not talking. He’s doing fine off life support. Still, like I said, he’s not allowed any visitors—”

“Of course, but I’m his primary caregiver and I and Dr. Bates technically still have custody of him.” It was true, Mr. Jay had bounced between the legal system and the institutional system over the last couple of years like a ball in a pinball machine, his paperwork being shuffled around until now he was in a kind of limbo, a pivotal transitional period between being sane and officially declared insane. “I’m the one who’ll determine when John Doe is ready to stand trial again. And I cannot determine that without looking at his current condition and getting some understanding of his mental status. It’s vital that I know that, since it’ll help me gauge the rate at which he’s healing over the next few weeks and months.”

“He’s stable, Dr. Quinzel,” Godfried said, looking down at his clipboard as if that settled it.

Officer Chambers took a step forward, as if he was prepared to escort her back downstairs, when Harley reached forward and gently moved the clipboard out of Godfried’s face. “Do you want to go ahead and make the call to Chief Clay Chapman, or should I?”

“Call?” Godfried asked, looking lost.

“Yes. You see, I trust you with my patient’s life, Dr. Godfried. I respect the work you do here at GL Memorial, you and all your staff. I trust your skills as a healthcare professional, and I understand that—” She broke off. For a moment, a troll was dancing on top of Godfried’s head, and then, all at once, it was gone. “—that you went through rigorous training to get where you are, and are deserving of every ounce of recognition you get. It must be pretty upsetting when someone undermines your authority. I can sympathize. It’s happening to me right now,” she said, and glanced between the doctor and the officer. “We’re all professionals here. All I’m asking is for a little professional courtesy without having to bug the police chief and the police commissioner right now, since I understand they’ve got other things on their minds right now. If you watch the news, you’ll know what I mean.”

The infiltration of Wayne Manor by someone suspected of being the Riddle Killer had been the big talk over the last twenty-four hours. Nobody seemed to be able to talk about anything else on all the radio stations. Pundits hypothesized about the state of Gotham City’s law enforcement if their own get-togethers were being crashed by a murderer walking in their midst. Not only that, but James Gordon was being asked some tough questions by members of the press, hounded practically everywhere he went, even right up to the doorstep of his own house, where it was said he now lived alone. Couple that with pictures that had appeared of him getting into an argument with Mayor Walden at last night’s Policeman’s Ball, and one could easily see how the fabric of this city was coming apart right before their very eyes.

Godfried looked at her, then at Officer Chambers, and the two men sighed in almost perfect unison. “How long do you need?” he said.

“Ten minutes should be fine.”

About fifteen minutes later, Harley was being shown down Corridor H, to the ICU. Officer Chambers had handed her off to an Officer Jones while he went back downstairs to his post. Jones explained to the two guards standing outside John Doe’s room what was going on, and they nodded wordlessly as she stepped inside.

There was one guard inside the room, standing near the door. He stood aside and admitted them, looking at Officer Jones quizzically. Jones only gave a don’t ask look at the other, and Harley moved inside slowly.

Mr. Jay—her sweet, tragic, misunderstood Mr. Jay—was lying in his hospital bed with the back elevated at a forty-five-degree angle. He had an oxygen mask over his mouth, and he was strapped tightly to the bed. His eyes were closed. Somewhere nearby, machines beeped steadily. He wasn’t on life support, so that was good. That’ll make it easier, she thought. The plan had already formed in her mind without her knowing whence it came. It was just there, crystallized and perfect.

They still hadn’t checked her for weapons or paraphernalia, which was odd when you considered it. The Walther PPK was small enough to hide in her bra—she had bought a cup size larger to conceal it even better—but she still wasn’t sure where or when she would even use it.

His chest rose and up down naturally. He looked perfectly at peace, not a care in the world. Then, as though sensing her presence, his eyelids slowly parted. At the door, Officer Jones murmured to her, “Don’t go any closer than three feet of the bed, Doctor.”

“Why not?” she asked.

Officer Jones looked at Harley like maybe she needed to be admitted to Arkham Asylum. Maybe I do, she thought. Maybe we all do. Mommy, Daddy, Helena Kingsley, Mr. Jay, Roy Higgens, Officer Chambers, Dr. Godfried, Batman, all of us…maybe…

Harley turned around and faced her patient. And, all at once, the melancholy feeling of the medication, of being alone, of knowing she was losing her mind, of life, all evaporated. She was in love. She knew it in that instant in that same way that we know we must swallow food if we want sustenance. She knew it as well as if it had been proven in some mathematical theorem or peer-reviewed study. It was truth. He was truth. He wouldn’t turn his back on her like all the others had. He wouldn’t abuse her like her father had. It would be different with him. She knew it. And it wasn’t the fake kind of knowing it like how she knew the trolls dancing around her were not real—no, this was the real kind of knowing.

He defended me to Helena Kingsley when she was being mean.

When she was young, Harley had written to a man on death row. She had only been sixteen, but she had felt such a connection with Marlowe before they gave him the lethal injection. She had never told her parents this, but it had started her fascination with treating people’s hearts and minds rather than punishing their bodies for what they had done. Knowing her family’s history for mental illness, she had felt a kinship with Marlowe, right up until he sent his last letter to her, telling her that she would be better off finding someone who wasn’t in prison for murder. So, in the end, he had shunned her, too.

They all did, she thought. But he won’t. Not Mr. Jay. He can’t. He understands what it’s like to be the outcast, to have no one that’ll listen, no one who can understand. He knows!

Harley approached, and obeyed the officer’s three-foot rule. She stood away from his bed, looking down at him and offering a smile, which he didn’t return. Across his chest was bandaging, some of it red and oh, God, how she loved red! And purple! Yes, red and purple! They went together so well. “Hey there, Mr. Jay,” she said softly. Behind her, if she had taken the time to look, Harley would’ve seen the two officers exchange another quizzical glance, and a weird smirk at the nickname she’d given him. “How’ve they been treating you here?”

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He said nothing.

“I’ve spoken with Dr. Godfried. He said you’re doing loads better than when they brought you in.”

He said nothing.

Harley looked at those facial scars, and, as she had many times before, she irked to know what had caused them. Did he do that to himself? Did someone else do it? Harley decided that, no matter what the answer was, society had done that to him. She tried holding back the tears. “The, um…the guy that shot you, he’s in police custody. They caught him…not like he’s goin’ anywhere fast anyway, though, right?” She almost laughed, but contained it.

He said nothing.

“Uh, I don’t want you to worry right now, because you’re still under my care, and therefore in my custody. The custody of Arkham Asylum, that is. Um…Dr. Bates and I have assurances from the judge that so far nothing about your status has changed. You’re still under our care and we’re gonna continue to do everything in our power to help you.”

He said nothing.

“Have you been keeping up with your sign language?”

He said nothing.

“I’ll bet you have,” Harley said, and started signing in the air. Just in case either of the officers behind her knew sign language, she kept her back to them and did most of the signing in front of her chest. And Harley just spoke from her heart, signing, “Well, it seems I’ve got a gun. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with it, but I think I intend to kill people. I’ve got some ideas of whom to start with, but I’m new at this and kind of making this up as I go. I’ve got one idea involving a straitjacket. I’m going to recommend to them that they put you in one. Remember, the key to escaping a straitjacket is to take a deep breath and tighten your muscles as soon as they start putting it on you. Exhale and relax once the jacket’s on, that’ll give you some slack to work with. You don’t have to dislocate your arm to escape, that’s a myth that Harry Houdini invented for theater’s sake. I’m rambling now, where was I? Oh, yeah, as your sleeves are pulled behind you, try to make sure your stronger arm is over your weaker arm. Push your stronger arm towards the opposite shoulder, then bring your strong arm up and over your head. Unbuckle your sleeve buckle with your teeth. Then bend over, step on the slack of the jacket, and stand straight up, pulling it off. Wait for my distraction. I should be nearby, killing people. Let’s see, what else have did I forget?” Harley’s hands paused in midair, then she shrugged and said, “Oh, well, I guess that’s it for now. Just be ready, Mr. Jay. Okay? If you understand all I’ve said, please wink or smile or give me a sign.”

He said nothing.

Then, after a few seconds, she thought she saw the most imperceptible nod. Was it really a nod? Was it really, or was it just her imaginings again? No, it was real, she told herself. Believe! Believe in yourself Harley! Believe in us!

She sighed, and turned to face Officer Jones and the room guard. “Thank you, officers. That’s all I needed. He appears fine.”

They left the room, and Harley still felt an electrical sensation from having gotten the chance to look in those eyes one more time. Just give it time, she thought. Just give it time. He’ll be out before you know it. Just stay calm, and stick to your plan.

HARLEEN! It was her father again, beckoning from somewhere.

Harley ignored it as best she could until she located Dr. Godfried again. The big man was speaking with a lieutenant and a few nurses, his hands in his pocket so casual, like it was every day he had a man of Mr. Jay’s greatness. “Dr. Godfried,” she said on approach, “do you by chance keep any straitjackets on hand here at Gillian Loeb Memorial?”

The big man shook his big neckless head. “No, why?”

“Because I’ll want my patient good and secure when you take him from here.”

Godfried glanced at the officer next to him. “I’d assumed he’d be taken out of here in cuffs or…?” He trailed off, shrugging.

“Why would you assume that?” Harley said. “He’s a patient of Arkham Asylum, not a prisoner. Not yet, anyway. I won’t have him hobbled in chains. I still maintain that he’s potentially dangerous to himself and others—I admit to that, though I am his caretaker—and cuffs are only a liability. They can and have been used as a weapon.” She shook her head. “No, Doctor, confine him to a straitjacket. It’ll be much safer for all of us, trust me. I’ll talk to Warden Sharp at Arkham and make all the arrangements, and I’m sure he’ll provide a good straitjacket or two within the next few days.” Harley had no idea how to escape shackles or handcuffs, other than have the keys, which she didn’t have, but she’d been around straitjackets for close to a decade and knew how they worked.

We’re doing it, Mr. Jay. We’re really, really gonna do it. Just stay strong, luv. We’ll make it out. You and me, together. You and your Harley Quin. That little joke just came to her, and she sniggered all the way back to the elevator, where Officer Jones escorted her. She hid her mouth with her hand, pretending she was trying to hide a sneeze.

Harley…Harley Quin. Harlequin. She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it before. It was providence. It was undeniable. They were meant to be together.

* * *

SARAH PICKED HIM up early the morning after the incident at Wayne Manor. She spent the day talking with Gordon and his people, telling them how they were going to coordinate this effort between GCPD and FBI task forces. Gordon watched as his old partner masterfully conducted numerous officers, assigning them all new units based on a roster she had of the GCPD. Gary, her assistant, was also helping to mete out the various new duties, which mainly included a constant update to him of all gangland activities. Sarah and her task force were particularly interested in Parkinson Avenue, or Park Empire, and they wanted to know about the movements of the Suns and the Mobsters.

All that day, her people were out riding around in various patrol cars with the officers, learning their beats, getting a firsthand feel of the urban landscape. Over the next two weeks, Sarah wanted them all to know their particular districts like the backs of their hands. The task force would also be renting a few other hotel suites for setting up crime labs and for culling the surveillance videos that would be coming in the weeks ahead, videos of persons of interest in both the Falcone and Juarez community; these stations were in addition to the three others that Sarah had promised would remain clandestine.

A few groups were already getting to work on the hunt for Nate, having tracked all the e-mails and text messages that GCPD’s Cyber Crimes Division had that indicated Nate’s movements over the last year. There were e-mails from Carmine Falcone’s lawyer to a group of guys known to work for the Calabrias in the past, and they had sent e-mails back and forth about moving someone they referred to as “our mutual friend” around the Bowery, and Gary Carlisle wanted to see this Bowery for himself and start mapping, even though it was scheduled for demolition. “He may be somewhere in there,” Gary said over coffee at the Storm’s End Café. “If not there, then Park Empire.”

“I agree,” Sarah told him. She turned to Gordon. “Jim, what about this Molehill Mob? What’s their deal?”

“Some roughnecks from Molehill Street is all,” he said. “At least, that’s where they started out. They started out as a group of unemployed young toughs, getting together to protest the loss of jobs, how the good ones are being sent overseas. Then, a few of their protests turned violent. Two of them got shot by police during a small riot, and things just escalated from there. A few homeless kids joined the pack, sprayed graffiti for them on police cars for a time until one of them got shot. Now they’ve spilled over a bit. They’re drug dealers, occasional bank robbers, but not in any kind of organized way. Dreaded Sun is the gang you wanna be worried about, they’re far more violent, and a bit more sophisticated because they’ve been known to use carrier pigeons to communicate instead of cell phone or e-mail, while the Molehill boys are mostly run by homeless thugs that are just now entering their thirties. Lotta lost kids in the Molehill Mob, but like I said, not very violent. The most organized they ever got was stealing cell phones. They love cell phones.”

“Okay, let’s talk about these Suns,” she said. “But I still want to get back to the Mobsters at some point.” She looked at Gary. “I understand the Suns got their own language, their own thieves’ cant, and I wanna speak it.” Gary nodded and made a note on his pad.

“You’d have to learn it from them,” Gordon said. “And they don’t exactly have classes on this language.”

“I’ll bet you’ve got a few locked up, don’t you?”

“You mean some Suns? Sure. For misdemeanors and some felonies here and there.”

“Well, pick your most inquisitive cop, a real clever guy, one who thinks fast, and get him working closely with a Sun that’ll listen when we offer to commute his sentence for a language lesson. Know anybody smart like that?”

Gordon thought he did. “Henry Mason, maybe,” he said. “He solved the riddle that saved Theresa Fuller’s life.”

“Good. Get him on that. What’s next on the agenda, Gary?”

Her assistant coordinator sighed. “Uh, let’s see, we got back some forensics on the text message sent to Bruce Wayne last night, as well as the papers used, handwriting analysis, all that good stuff.”

“And?”

Gary made a face. “About what we expected. The number that sent the text is from another cloned cell. We tried tracing the origin of the package that got delivered, but it came from an anonymous remailing service.” He tapped his pen on his notebook. “This guy’s slick, Sarah.”

“Tell me about it.”

When their talk was finished, Sarah left Gary to deal with some other details, and rented her own SUV and took Gordon out for a drive. They went out to Grueber Point, which overlooked Miller Harbor and the Aparo Expressway. She shut the engine off and got out of the SUV, and Gordon followed. Sarah leaned against the front of the car, looking out across the water. “I always loved Miller Harbor,” she said. “Never was a better place in this whole city to sneak off to to clear your head.”

“Yeah,” Gordon said, putting one hand in his pocket and using the other one to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“This is what we came here to protect,” Sarah said. “This right here. All this gorgeousness.”

“With the extra manpower you guys are bringing, and with your leadership, I have no doubt we’ll do all right.”

“Just all right?” she said, smiling at him.

“You know what I mean.” He glanced at her, and then looked out at the ferry, which was just passing underneath Aparo Expressway. “Listen, Sarah, we never got to finish what we were talking about last night.” She looked at him. “You were in the middle of explaining some serious assertions about the mayor, and then all the craziness with Wayne happened, and, well…”

She glanced at Gordon. “Did you talk to your friend yet?”

The commissioner shook his head and answers, though he didn’t like being deflected. “I haven’t had a chance to do anything since the press started hounding me, much less arrange a meeting with anyone in secret,” he said. “They were at my house again this morning, a reporter from GCN and two reporters from the Informer.” Gordon didn’t tell her that the fact that his wife had left him had been an indicator to many in the press that something else was going on. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Whenever a person’s significant other left them, the press automatically saw that as condemnation from someone so close. He also didn’t mention to Sarah that he’d woken up this morning and reached across the bed for Barbara, only to find her part of the bed empty. He was missing his wife and best friend, the person who he’d unwound with when he came home from work and who had listened whenever he had a problem. He’d tried calling her cell and her mother’s house this morning, but just got voicemail each time. Jim Gordon’s stress level was higher than he cared to admit these days. “But don’t change the subject,” he told her. “What’s this business you were saying about Walden? What’s he into?”

Sarah pushed herself off the SUV, and folded her arms. “I was only just informed of it before I and my task force were sent down here. I found out at the briefing in Washington.”

Gordon stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the harbor. “Found out what, Sarah?”

“That the bureau has been looking into Marcellus Walden ever since his days on city council,” she said. “They’ve got a file on him two inches thick, Jim. They can’t prove a whole lot, but what they can prove is highly, highly suggestive.”

“Like what?” he urged. “Go on.”

Sarah looked at him, smirked, and shook her head. “I shouldn’t even be telling you this…” But it was obvious she had brought him way out here for a reason. She started pacing, looking down at the pebbles and kicking some around. “Three years ago, the bureau believed Marcellus Walden was accepting bribes from city developers, specifically a group called U&E Planning. Now, before you get your feathers all in a ruffle, just know that the bureau’s beliefs never crystallized into a full-on indictment, obviously, else you and everybody else would’ve heard about it.”

Gordon waited for more, but she said nothing else. “That’s it? Just a hunch that he took bribes from city developers?”

"The evidence is all very suggestive, Jim,” Sarah said. “Certain people in the bureau were so certain that the investigation actually got very, ah, involved. Things ramped up when wiretapping showed Walden made three phone calls over a four-month period to a cell phone belonging to Seth Blair. Ever heard of him?” Gordon shook his head. “An ex-con, supposedly reformed, but he’s been up to some shady stuff of his own since he got out of prison. We’ve got him up on charges of filing a false tax return, but that case is still pending. We’ve also got two counterfeiters in custody who claim Blair and Tony Zucco were the masterminds behind their scam, as well as a money laundering system that’s helping out Carmine Falcone’s people here in Gotham these days. That would put him in Nate’s back pocket, if all this is true, that is,” she said. “So, with all these question marks popping up around Blair and Walden, we decided to monitor more of Blair’s calls. Guess what we found.” Gordon shrugged and shook his head. “Calls made to Cesare Calabria, a cousin to Gaspare Calabria, who you have in custody.”

Gordon’s mind worked slowly, not because it was difficult to process, but because he wanted to make certain he wasn’t jumping to any conclusions. “What are you saying, Sarah? Are you saying there’s a good chance the mayor of Gotham City is working in collusion with elements of the underworld here?”

Sarah smiled. “Now that’s another question mark, ain’t it?”

“Jesus, Sarah…”

“Now you see why we’re here. Fighting back against street crime is important to the bureau, but not so important as making sure the politicians running this country are clean,” she said. “That’s why I was asked to work closely with you. My superiors asked me to give them a list of people I felt confident we could trust in this endeavor. The list wasn’t long, but you were on it, despite what I said when I first got into town about you playing for the wrong team. The bat was an unknown, but since you trust him, I told my superiors that that was as good as the President himself vouching for him. At least, as far as I’m concerned.” She shrugged. “Some things I still have to keep you in the dark about,

“So, this isn’t about finding a serial killer, or wresting control of the streets back from the Suns or the Molehill Mob, or even tracking down Nate. It’s about getting the dirt on a dirty mayor?”

Sarah made a face. “Don’t misunderstand, Jim. It’s about all those things. But if you’re asking if fighting corruption is more important, then of course I’m inclined to say yes. Corruption has gotten out of control, more than the government and the bureau are willing to say. It’s rampant, through all agencies, through all facets. Remember the teachers in that educational scandal in Atlanta? It all involved money, how much people were getting paid to keep quiet about certain failings in the system. And what about all the Ponzi schemers run amok on Wall Street, and helped by their political connections? It’s getting out of hand, Jim. Washington knows it. Believe it or not, there are some who give a care. We’ve gotta start somewhere. We can hardly trust the people inside anymore, so we need help from outsiders, ones that we can trust to not be a part of the system.”

Jim suspecting where she was going with this. “Batman.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Jim,” she said. “The lesser of two evils. Take your pick of who’s who in this, but right now I know who I’d choose.” Sarah laughed. “You’re corrupt, Jim. You’re aiding and abetting a vigilante and an enemy of the state. But right now, for this moment in time, you’re the right kind of corrupt. The only kind we can trust.” She looked down at her feet for a moment, then back up at him. “Which brings me to the reason that I left Gary on an assignment and drove you out here. Alone,” she said. “I’ve been given a special assignment, one that’s highly classified.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“I’ve already told you. I need to talk to the bat.” She pointed a finger at him. “And don’t stall me anymore, I’ve told you why I need to talk to him. We need informants. If you come as a package deal that’s fine by us. You and the bat are a corrupt pair—you’re blasphemy as far as real law enforcement is supposed to work—but for right now, willing to arrange something.”

“Arrange what, though? What, exactly?”

“I won’t know until I’ve spoken with him, felt him out, seen what he can do.”

Gordon ran a finger over his mustache. He didn’t know what to say to say to any of this. “All right,” he said, pausing because another ferry was passing behind him and blowing its strident horn across the water. “So you told your people that they could trust me, and here we are. So, assuming I know where to find him, where do we go from here?”

She looked up at the sky. “It’ll be dark soon, and looks like we’ll have an overcast. I understand that’s the perfect condition to see a Klieg searchlight.”