CHAPTER 18

Not surprisingly, the story had run on the front page of every newspaper in Gotham City, and was the main story on news sites and on GCN. The Riddle Killer had boldly made a play at Wayne Manor, and during a Policeman’s Ball, no less! With Gotham’s greatest crime fighters present, and many of its political leaders just walking around enjoying an evening of celebration and light entertainment, the Riddle Killer had actually targeted Gotham’s favorite bad boy billionaire. Details weren’t yet being released to the public, but with the FBI’s JTTF team now in town there seemed to be a clear indication that matters were getting out of hand for the GCPD. Commissioner Gordon, already in hot water over statements made to Mayor Walden that had been recorded and aired on various news sites, was not making any comments. Pictures had been posted in the Informer of him snarling at Mayor Walden. The Informer was also reporting that friends and neighbors were indicating that James Gordon and his wife were separated.

Batman sat on a perch atop the newly renovated Cosgrove Theater, meant to reopen in six weeks at a gala event that would bring various celebrities to more red carpet events. The theater was located on Cape Carmine, near where the water kissed the harbor. There, at the very edge of the water, were signs that announced to one and all that Haley’s Circus was in town, and that “YOU’D BE A RIGHT FOOL TO MISS THE MAJESTY OF THE FLYING GRAYSONS!” Across the street and about a half mile to north of him, the searchlights of the Iceberg Lounge swept the night sky, and the glittering lights on the marquee announced an encore performance next month of The Hurlihees.

A siren wailed. Batman tuned in his police scanner, and discovered a 647 in progress on Quentin Street—lewd conduct, probably the same serial streaker that police had been after for a month now, not worth his time.

Tonight, Batman’s time was more well spent dealing with the Cobblepot fellow that Gordon had put him on to. Batman had heard that the Iceberg Lounge could be a hub for certain unscrupulous characters, but worse things were said about neighborhoods like the Bowery and Parkinson Avenue, so the nightclub had been relatively low on his list of places to investigate deeply. There were a few reasons that this was now at the top of his list, not the least of which was the fact that he needed to get out of the manor for a bit and go to work to clear his mind of something he knew for a fact: the Riddler, whoever he was, wherever he was, was onto him.

The sweep of guests at Wayne Manor hadn’t turned up anything of substance, just a few people saying that they’d seen the dark-green-suited man Bruce Wayne had described, but none had spoken to him or knew who he was. And since neither Gordon nor the FBI could do anything else with the source of the phone that had texted the riddle to him—it had been yet another cloned cell phone—there wasn’t much left to do besides follow Gordon’s lead on Cobblepot. The Riddler had covered his tracks well, not a single fingerprint could be found on any of the items used to convey the riddles—not the letter placed in Bruce’s pocket, not the scroll that had been mailed to him, and not the plaque with the altered engraving.

I’m running out of places to search, he thought. Which brought him to here, twilight on Cape Carmine, waiting for the Iceberg Lounge to close for the night. But that would be a while. From the look of things, the Lounge was still swingin’. Cars continued pulling up and the drivers handed off keys to valets, and a there was a line of people that wrapped around the block, waiting to get inside. Bruce Wayne had gotten an invitation from the owner of the nightclub himself when it first opened months before, but he had graciously declined. Would’ve been nice to get to know the inside of the place better, he thought. I guess I’m doing this the hard way. The Batman had a map of what the place had looked like when it had had another owner. From it, he could guess where the main offices would be.

He checked the time on his flip-top wrist computer. It’d be a good while before the Lounge shut down for the night. He supposed he might as well skulk around the area for a time and listen in on the police channel for anything he might be able to assist with.

The new blue-and-gray batsuit was even better at twilight. Moving from rooftop to rooftop, he sometimes hopped over, while other times he needed help escalating with the GTEM gun, and still other times he floated downward, tucking and rolling to a halt. He sat at the edge of a few buildings, not remaining for too long. He had to keep moving, or else some thug might just take a shot at him with a rifle. These days in Gotham, who knew for sure? Batman certainly couldn’t make himself an easy target.

Moving around like this wasn’t entirely for the purpose of hunting. At times like these, when things seemed to be coming apart, it helped him to stay on the move. And Batman was fairly certain that there was no more perilous time in his life than right now. I’m exposed, he thought. I’m naked and vulnerable, but only one man knows it.

It was true, the Riddler had figured him out, it would seem. But how? After he had been so careful? How did someone else outside of Lucius and Alfred really know? Bruce Wayne had dreamt up the Batman project, something unheard of the world over, and had gone to great lengths to conceal his identity throughout the endeavor. He scheduled flights and paid all the necessary fees to make trips to the Bahamas appear legit, or trips to a ski resort. He’d even upped the amount of physical check-ups each month with his doctors, just to begin rumors that he suffered from an unspecified malady that kept him reclusive and incapable of such feats as the bat was known to do.

Bruce Wayne had also managed to doctor some of his old school records to make him appear to be pretty dumb in math, science, and social studies, so that, when he’d had them leaked to the press some years ago, it had made him look like a stupid rich kid who’d only skirted by on Mommy and Daddy’s money.

Of course, there had been hiccups here and there, such as a certain former Wayne Enterprises employee stumbling upon information that was highly suspicious, but by no means conclusive. That was old news, though. Besides, he and Lucius had dealt with that problem.

Or had they?

The other, and possibly more important question, was why hadn’t the Riddler shared it with anyone else yet? To Batman, the answer seemed fairly obvious. He likes being the one with all the power. He has the knowledge, and if anybody else knows it then he’s not as special as he was before. The Riddler was bragging, dangling the unspoken threat of revealing his secret right in front of him. That meant that, for the moment, it was just Batman and the Riddler in a wicked kind of duel.

He’d withheld the last two riddles from Gordon in case it allowed the police to know what the Riddler knew—that is, if Gordon or his people solved these new riddles, they might figure out Bruce Wayne is Batman. He had also sent his butler away from the manor, since it was no longer safe there. Still, Alfred insisted on carrying out his duties. “This is my home and this is where I work,” he had said. “And I won’t be driven away from it because of some deranged lunatic who thinks he can outsmart you.” When Bruce had asked him if he thought their time had finally come, Alfred answered, “I’ve yet to see a problem you cannot solve, Master Bruce.”

Presently, there were howls and screams near him. Batman followed them. A group of Suns was out in this area tonight, eight of them screaming and hollering as they walked down an alleyway between a grocery store and a hair salon. The Suns were getting to be everywhere these days, and Batman had gotten into the habit of following them wherever he spotted them, or whenever he happened to have no particular hunt going on at the time.

Right then, the Suns weren’t doing anything besides laughing and carrying on. At one point, one of them took out a knife and waved it at a woman going by, but she jogged across the street to get away from them while they called after her, whistling and suggesting she do something lewd.

Finally, when one of them waved the knife at another passerby, Batman decided he would attempt to check these punks before they hurt someone. Punks need checking, especially the ones with tattoos of blazing suns on their chests. He shot his GTEM gun to the roof of the grocery store, and then swung over and let some slack out. Just as he was descending on them, one of them turned around, spotted him in the air, and shouted, “Yo, T-Ray! It’s the bat!”

He dropped between them, and they surrounded him at once. Before coming down to confront them, Batman had dialed up the power of his muscle suit in case they jumped on top of him all at once—he had finished integrating the STACS technology into his first batsuit prototype version. “Drop all of your weapons,” he told them. “Leave now.”

“Hey, man, it’s a free country!” one of them shouted.

Another one stepped up, and spit on his boots and started to say something. But this Sun was young, and Batman quelled him with a look.

“Yeah, fool!” said another Sun who was a bit braver, and then whipped out a switchblade. “Ever heard o’ the First Amendment! Right to bear arms, fool!” He started to swing.

“Wrong amendment,” Batman said, a second before the attack came. He moved with a speed that untrained punks like this would never be able to equal, with grace they would never comprehend. The elbow slammed into the man’s sternum before his fist could even reach the bat. One reached out to grab at the antenna on his head, but he snatched at that one’s wrist, twisted it until he went to the ground, and then kicked him in the chest. The PIaDM heat/pain beam from his left gauntlet downed another one, but the beam was too narrow to affect them all. A head-butt and a pensataq finished off two others, and the others finally backed off before they could get too involved.

Before fleeing, one of them had tried punching him in the side, but the shear-thickening liquid inside his armor absorbed pretty much all the power, and Batman heard the punk’s wrist and knuckles crack. He delivered a hammerfist to the Sun’s face, knocking him out cold.

One of them, the one he’d hit with the PIaDM, remained on the ground, writhing in pain and disoriented. Batman bent over and lifted him off the ground by the collar. “Tell them I still own these streets.”

“T-tell who?”

“Everyone. All of them. Everybody you know.” He reached into the man’s pockets, and emptied them out until he found a wallet and a wad of money. In the wallet he found stolen credit cards, and one driver’s license with the Sun’s face on it. “You’ll tell them for me, won’t you, Lester Simon Mitchell?”

He let them all go, most of them having to lean on one another while they retreated. He never knew how these encounters would go; sometimes they fled just at the sight of him, while other times they stayed to fight, fancying themselves the ones to finally match the bat. In the Bowery, they know to run. But these are new toughs. The Suns are spreading to Cape Carmine and no one’s making them respect authority besides me. The Batman project was only meant to work until Gotham could finally exist without him. As he climbed back up onto the rooftops, he spotted the bat signal flashing off in the southwest, and found himself wondering if that day would ever come.

* * *

“I DON’T GET it. I thought you said I’d be learning stick shift, not manual.” Harley looked at the steering wheel in front of her with a degree of suspicion.

The driving instructor looked at her dubiously. “Manual and stick shift mean the same thing,” he explained. “I’ll be using both terms, or I can just say one if it’s too confusing.”

“It’s fine, um…” Harley closed her one good eye and sighed. “Okay…okay, let’s get started.”

“When we spoke over the phone, you didn’t tell me that you had an eye injury. It’s not a good idea to learn how to drive with an injury like that.”

“I’ll be fine. We’ll go slow. Just the basics, ’kay?”

“Um, well…okay. Uh, the gas is on the far right, the brake is in the middle, and the clutch is on the far left. Now, when you press in the clutch, it disengages the gears. It’s used every time you shift. You—” He was cut off suddenly when Harley slammed on the gas, and they rocketed to the other end of the empty training course. “Whoa! Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa!” he cried as they came close to the other wall. “Brake! Braaaaaaaake!”

Harley saw the wall coming, and thought, I’m comin’ for you, Mr. Jay. I’m—

They would have slammed into the wall had the driving instructor not mashed the emergency brake on his side. They screeched to a halt, and Harley started laughing and clapping. She had no idea what she was doing, but she had never had so much fun. “Again! Again!”

The instructor looked at her incredulously. “Miss, this isn’t a merry-go—”

She reached into her bra without thinking, and finally found a use for the Walther PPK. It was aimed at the instructor’s face before he knew it, and Harley pulled the trigger before she knew it. The bullet went through his head, shattering the window on the other side. Harley put the pistol on the dash, and said, “Again again again!” before slamming the on the gas, jerking the wheel to one side, and driving directly off the training course and into oncoming traffic.

It all happened so fast it might’ve been a dream. Was it a dream? Later that night, she would wake up and walk into her garage to find a car still running and a dead guy in the passenger seat. Part of her would understand that it was real, while another part of her would forever question if anything was ever going to be real again, or if anything had ever been real.

Real or imagined, her first murder had come and gone easily, and she knew from her time interviewing other killers that it only got easier from here. The first time’s the hardest, she thought. That’s what they always say. But she hadn’t even felt this first one. She hadn’t even sat with it and adequately pondered it. The only thing she knew was that she had now joined that elite pantheon of people who knew the insides of themselves, who actually knew what they were made of. Though she had many continuing hallucinations, Harley suffered no illusions.

In fact, quite the contrary, Harley’s eyes were opened now. For the first time ever, she saw what it was that Mr. Jay had been trying to tell her in their second interview, when he had told her, “In a world with random injustice, there is no justice.” Her dead driving instructor now knew that better than anybody. Too bad for him he had learned it the hard way, but Harley got to reap the benefits of having that epiphany.

Point the gun, and pull the trigger. That simple. Just like that, people who think they can tell you want to do just shut up. Harley smiled at the thought. It was very liberating.

HARLEEN! her father shouted from someplace. His voice had grown louder since he had discovered he couldn’t control her anymore.

She fell asleep that night, naked on top of a mound of newspaper clippings of Mr. Jay. “I’m comin’ for ya, Mr. Jay,” she whispered, snickering out loud to herself and the ants. “I’m comin’…don’t you worry, snoogums…”

“I know, Harley,” he said softly. He lay beside her, cradling her head in his arms. “I know, my little Harlequin. I know…I know…” She drifted off listening to those words. They were fine wine, and she drank deeply of them. The ants behind her eyes did, too.

* * *

THE ICEBERG LOUNGE finally cooled down a little after midnight. The bat signal was still shining. Gordon will just have to wait again, Batman thought. He had decided to go ahead with tonight’s plan and pay a visit to Cobblepot, rather than rush off to meet with the commissioner right away.

All lights on the bottom floor of the club had gone out, and now there were only a few lights in the windows, all of them on the second storey of the nightclub on the northwest corner. The Batman waited until he saw a cleaning crew leave with what looked like the last of the valets and bartenders. They each got into their car and pulled away, and Batman glided over from a neighboring building, silent as the wind and landing almost as quietly.

On the rooftop he found the security box that the floor plan had told him would be there. However, it appeared Cobblepot had given the security system an upgrade, because Batman had seen all sorts of designs before and the logo he saw on the outside was from Ardent Maximum Security, a subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises. That might’ve caused the bat to have a problem had he not had access to WE’s various security designs—the advantages to owning the biggest company in Gotham City were near limitless.

First, he examined the lock on the box, and saw that it was a heavy-duty Maglock. From his utility belt he pulled the electric lock pick gun, and he inserted it and got to work on the tumblers. A few seconds later he heard the faint click and the Maglock came off. Inside he found the TS switch, cut the orange wire, stripped each side, and connected the two with a wirenut. The portable, handheld computer jack in his utility belt allowed him to confirm the connection.

That ought to do it. The security system would be switched off while still believing it was on.

There was a single door that, according to his old floor plan of the place, led to a short staircase straight down to the second-floor lounge area. He used the lock pick gun again, and the door swung open.

Batman stepped down the dark staircase, at the foot of them there was another door, also locked, but again, it was no match for the lock pick gun. Once the door was unlocked he listened with the directional microphone to see if any voices were immediately on the other side, but heard none. He slowly pushed the door open and stepped out, noticing a camera across the hall from him just before he stepped into full view.

Batman stepped back into the stairwell, and un-holstered his GTEM gun, switching it over to the electromagnetic beam setting. He pointed the very tip of the gun outside of the door, and pulled the trigger. The camera would now be dealing with a good deal of EM energy, a micro-gamma ray pulse rendering its circuits useless forever. Batman had wound up on security footage before, and some of it had even ended up on GCN or posted on the Informer’s website, but he tried to minimize his exposure whenever he could.

He slipped out into the hallway, which was completely dark except for a light coming from a room at the far end. From that room came the sounds of various birds chirping, and a person talking in a low murmur. A discussion was happening with someone over the phone, and a TV was on low volume. There was also the sound of a money counter going at high speed.

As he got closer, he could hear the TV more clearly without need of the directional mic. It must have been turned to GCN or another news station, for he could hear an anchorwoman going on, “—the FBI saying about this right now, John? Do they suspect that Roy Higgens was actually paid or at least assisted by the mob in order to get rid of John Doe, the Joker? That is, we all heard that that was a security concern for those surrounding the Joker, that the Falcone crime family would try and silence him since he knew so much about their operations—”

Batman came up beside the door, pressed his back against the wall, and peeked around the corner of the open doorway. Inside, he found a large, dimly-lit office, one dominated by a huge, kidney-shaped desk and a small trickling fountain off to one side that kept a pair of living swans. There were a few perches around the room, as well, some of which kept parrots, parakeets, robins, falcons, hawks, and an owl. The windows were open, and Batman assumed it was so that this office, which seemed to double as an aviary, could give the birds free reign to fly about. In fact, there was another owl just now swooping in through one window, alighting on a perch beside its partner.

At the center of the room was a short, rotund fellow in a tux, though his jacket had been pulled off and his sleeves were rolled up. Beside him, leaning beside the desk, was an umbrella with a cane handle, and a pistol, a mousegun that sat beside a stack of money that had been organized in rows and lined up along the edge of the desk. The money counter was still working away loudly while the little fat man spoke on a phone to someone else.

“Well, you can tell him that I don’t have any use for a man who renegotiates a price after a price as already been agreed upon by both parties,” Cobblepot was saying. Batman recognized him as the fellow in the pictures that Gordon’s stakeout men had taken. “No…no, that won’t do. You tell him what I just told you. It’s not becoming of a professional to start bargaining again once a deal’s already been made. You don’t reopen negotiations. Tell him I said that. And then tell him I said he can kiss my big fat ass.” With that, Cobblepot hung up with a stab of his thumb into his phone, and tossed it away into a sofa.

While the Penguin had been talking, Batman slipped surreptitiously into the room and found a dark corner to hide in. He had also lightly closed the door behind him, and locked it. He did all of this so silently that he never even stirred a single bird. After the little man fumed to himself for a few seconds, Batman finally whispered, “Oswald Cobblepot?”

The little man jolted and turned, picking up the umbrella leaning against the desk and aiming it around as though it were a gun. Batman thought it was strange that he hadn’t gone for the mousegun. What does he have in that umbrella that he feels will defend him?

“Who’s there?!” Cobblepot demanded.

“I need some questions answered,” Batman said, and slowly stepped out from behind one of the large cages, where a pair of doves made their home.

Cobblepot spun and aimed his umbrella at him, and froze there for a moment. Then, after a few seconds, he visibly relaxed. “Oh…it’s you, then.” He sighed and lowered the umbrella by a fraction. “Your boy Gordon sent you, I take it? When he said he’d be sending some people around, he failed to mention it would be like this,” Cobblepot said, and snorted. “Is this how the GCPD gets things done these days, by hiring out mercenaries like you to do all the hard work? No wonder nothing’s getting done in our fair city.”

Batman wouldn’t rise to the insult. “I want to know about Edward Nygma.”

“I told Gordon all I knew about that,” the Penguin said, and turned away from the bat as though he were no more a nuisance than the droppings in the dove cage, something for someone else to clean out.

“The information you gave Gordon wasn’t good enough.”

“Oh, well then! I guess I’ll have to conjure up some new information straight out of my nether regions, won’t I? Forewarning, the information I give under torture will be as spurious as the rumor that you drink blood.”

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Batman watched him carefully, and looked about the large office for the cameras he knew must be there. “Who else did you send Nygma’s work to?” he asked, taking a step closer to the small man. “There must have been others.”

“Others? Like who?” Cobblepot went back to counting his money, dropping it into the machine to sort through while he kept his back turned to the intruder.

Batman stepped slowly around another birdcage, this one filled with parakeets. He came within a couple steps of the nightclub owner, and realized just how short he really was. Cobblepot couldn’t have been any taller than five feet tall, and looked a little under that, putting him at borderline dwarfism. “Others, like hackers,” Batman said. “Did Nygma come to you asking for help in finding anyone to help him upload a virus, perchance?”

“Perchance he did,” the Penguin allowed. “But I can’t recall everything that’s said to me by everyone I meet.”

“We both know that’s not true,” Batman said, rounding the table so that he was no longer talking to Cobblepot’s back. On this side of the desk, he spotted two large safes in the floor that were probably concealed by rugs. “I’ve spoken with a couple of my people in the street. That’s where I get a lot of my information from,” he said. “They tell a different story. They say the Penguin is the man to go to if they want infor—”

Cobblepot rounded on him. “I’ll thank you to be a gentleman and never refer to me by that ugly pejorative again, sir,” he said, at once looking up at the bat and locking eyes with him. He paused with several thousand dollars in his hands. “I’m many things, a businessman, an ornithologist with a degree, and a nightclub owner. I think those accomplishments ought to be sufficient to overshadow any problems with my genetics. Call me what you want, but as long as you don’t play childish games I’ll not call you Batbrain or Batsy or any other juvenile thing.”

Good, that got his attention. Batman looked around the table. “This is a lot of money for a night’s take.”

“It’s not a night’s take. This is everything we’ve earned in the last month.” He added, “I don’t trust the banks in Gotham.”

“Still, this is a lot of money even for just being a nightclub owner’s revenue.”

“If this is some strange way that Commissioner Gordon wishes to serve a warrant for a search, or if it’s the GCPD’s way of running a shakedown and asking for bribes, just be out with it, my friend.”

“I don’t want your money,” he said, “but I will mess with your ability to gather it if you don’t give me what I want.” With his directional mic, he could hear several footsteps rushing down the hallway just outside, and men whispering to one another to stay down and keep quiet. They know I’m here. Probably saw me on a hidden camera somewhere in this office. Maybe that’s why Cobblepot’s so calm right now; he knows his reinforcements are on the way.

“And how would you ‘interfere’ with my business, pray tell?” he asked. Cobblepot smiled, looking positively thrilled at the prospect of a good yarn.

Batman approached him, the desk between him and the Penguin. He looked down at the money all around the desk, and then glanced up at the Lounge’s owner. “I could make a visit here once a week, or once every night if need be. You’ve got a reputation, but so do I. I think you know what will happen to your endless streams of information once everyone realizes this place is haunted by me. I’m betting they’ll all dry up pretty fast.”

Cobblepot pursed his lips, and wiggled that bent nose of his, germinating on what Batman had said. “I see,” he said. “And this tension that now exists between you and I, it could all be remedied by me uttering a few names. Any…misunderstandings would be alleviated.”

“Yes. In fact, I’d be willing to leave you completely alone for quite some time, allow you to talk to many of your sources, record their names, the dates you spoke with them, and what you talked about.” He added, “As long as you hand that information over to me from time to time.”

“Ah, so, the true meaning of your visit emerges. You’d want me to be a steady supplier of knowledge, is that it?” Cobblepot didn’t give him time to answer. He picked up his umbrella and waved it around at the money on the table. “You and Gordon want for free what other people have the decency to pay for.”

“I want Nygma,” Batman said. “I know that’s not his real name—”

“Oh, really? What was your first clue?”

“—so I want the real one from you.”

“Why would I know his real name?” Cobblepot asked. “I don’t deal with people’s private lives, just the information they’re dealing out and the people they want connected to.” He shrugged. “Social networking is very important these days, but everyone has a handle. So this guy’s handle is Edward Nygma, and the hackers I set him up with were members of a notorious hacker group, all of them with handles of their own. I handed over names and numbers, after that they probably set up a communications system of their own so not to get caught. If they conducted criminal activities, that is. It’s out of my hands now.”

“Which hacker group did Enigma use?”

“It’s none of your business, sir.”

“What’s the harm in telling if you think they’ve already moved beyond your reach?”

Cobblepot had started to pace, but now rounded on him again. “Two things: first, you’re not offering to pay, you’re threatening me with visitations unless I comply, and that’s no way for gentlemen to conduct business. Second, I have a reputation to maintain. I offer security for those who want to convey messages but not on Facebook like an idiot. What if it got back to my clients that Nygma’s identity had been compromised?”

“You’re worried about your reputation when a serial killer is on the loose, one that strapped a bomb on another man and forced him to detonate himself under threat of killing his whole family, which later he did anyway?”

Cobblepot grunted and walked over to far side of the desk, where he lifted up a black bag to stuff the money inside. “I don’t know about any of that. Neither you nor Gordon have presented any evidence that my clients are responsible for any such thing.”

Batman stepped around the desk, and started walking towards the little man. “I want the name of the hacker group Nygma used. If it’s money you want, then I can get it. That is, if the information proves solid.”

“It’s too late for that,” the Penguin said. “And I’ll not prevaricate any longer, sir. You broke in here, into my establishment, and made idle threats to ruin me if I didn’t cooperate.” He reached into both his pockets, and Batman watched him closely as he extracted a cigarette from his left pocket and a quellazaire from the other. He put the cigarette in the quellazaire and lit it with a gold lighter from his breast pocket. “If I may be so blunt, I really don’t like you, and probably never shall. That being said—” He suddenly pointed the umbrella’s tip directly at him, and the damn thing fired!

The bullet hit the bat in the center of his stomach, but the shear-thickening liquid stopped the small round cold, hardly knocking any wind out of him. Clever, he thought. And just as he was about to go after Cobblepot, the men he’d heard coming up the stairs busted in through the door. In one motion, Batman reached to the back of his utility belt and flung two smoke bombs out at them while he dived behind the desk. The explosions went off and filled the room within seconds, the birds all around him screeching and squawking.

Batman flipped down the HUD, and peeked over the desk to track the guards through the smoke. There were four of them, and doubtless none of them were trained for this kind of thing. He moved slowly around the desk, listening to them hack and cough. Just as he saw Cobblepot groping along the wall for the door, Batman aimed the PIaDM at him, and the Penguin went flying back into the parakeet cage like he’d been shot. Batman came up behind two of the guards and tagged them both in the neck at the same time with the auto-injectors from his utility belt, knocking them out cold in two seconds. The last two he approached from the side, though they never saw him, and he twisted the Glocks free of their wrists. He head-butted one and hammerfisted another, shattering teeth and jaws.

The nightclub owner was crawling on the ground trying to wave the smoke out of his face when Batman grabbed him up by his collar and dragged him down the hallway. By the time he got there, three more men were coming through a pair of double doors, their Glocks at ready-low as they moved in a bounding overwatch. Professionals, he thought. The hallway was narrow enough that he felt the PIaDM would get them all, so he shoved the Penguin in front of him as a human shield so they wouldn’t immediately fire, and then aimed his left gauntlet at them, sending two of them writhing to the ground while one leapt back through the double doors.

At the staircase leading to the roof, Batman pulled and shoved the little man up, and then locked the door behind him and quickly destroyed the lock with a quick-welder from his belt. “There,” he said. “Now we’ve got some time alone together.”

The Penguin struggled against his grasp. “Hnnnnnnnnnn…go to hell, Batsy!”

Batman threw him to the ground, kicked him in his side to roll him over, and then placed his heel on little man’s neck. “I don’t have a lot of sympathy for terrorist enablers,” he said, “and I also don’t have any patience for men who shoot me, so we’re going to make this quick. Tell me the name of the hacker group Nygma used, and I won’t break your neck.”

“You…ack…you wouldn’t! You’ve never killed anybody—”

“That you know of, Penguin! I do make occasional exceptions. It spares the police all the paperwork. Now, do you want to call this bluff? Because once we get this ball rolling, it doesn’t stop! When I make up my mind about something—”

“Parasyte!” he shouted. “Parasyte’s the name…of the group he used…they’re a bunch of black hats…”

Batman was glad he’d spoken, because if the Penguin called him on his bluff he wasn’t sure where he could go next. “Who in Parasyte did you deal with?”

“I…I never met him face-to-face. He e-mailed me, sent texts, that’s it.”

“What’s his handle?”

“Fibber…Fibber Optic…but it’s spelled funny…” Batman made him explain how exactly it was spelled, and, using his HUD, he started looking up uses for it online: Fibber Øptïc.

“Where can I find them online?” he asked.

“Here and there!”

“Where’s here and where’s there?” Batman pressed his boot harder into the little man’s fat neck, as men pounded against the door behind them.

“Their specialty…is banks, and corporate and industrial espionage…they hunt for security weaknesses…ack…and they…they usually look for confidential weapons designs, like from R&D departments, things like that…ack…I can’t…I can’t breathe!”

Batman eased off the pressure, but only by a margin. There were raised voices behind him, and harder slams against the door. No doubt they had brought some kind of furniture up the stairs to act as a battering ram.

He backed away from Cobblepot, who rolled over on his side and clutched at his throat, gasping for air. Sirens were not far off. The Penguin’s guards had undoubtedly phoned it in. Batman looked down at the little man and said, “You’re new in town, and you know a lot of things, but I guess you didn’t understand about me,” he said. “You’re an information broker, so consider yourself informed. I own the alleys. I own the streets. I own the night.”

Batman looked up at the sky. The bat signal wasn’t shining anymore, but that only meant Gordon would be at their meeting place.

When the Penguin’s goons finally burst through the door, the Batman was gone. He had retreated to the east side of the nightclub and fired his GTEM gun at a taller neighboring building. When the police vehicles finally showed up, he was blocks away and already working on a plan to find Fibber Øptïc.

* * *

THEY WAITED FOR him for over three hours, waiting inside her SUV and sipping coffee. They made small talk and listened to the radio. Sarah had been texting someone steadily, and eventually asked about his family, but each time Gordon had redirected the conversation on purpose. “You know, Jim,” she said at one point, “one of my goals here isn’t to take you away from your wife.”

“I know that,” he said. “But a lot of other people won’t believe that. There’s still enough people left from those days who think they know what went on between us, including Barbara. But let’s not talk about that.”

“Suit yourself.”

Presently, he glanced out the passenger side window. Gordon hadn’t liked the idea of bringing Sarah out here. He had never betrayed Batman’s confidence even once before, and he didn’t know how he’d take it this time. If he even shows up. It was starting to look like this would be one of the bat’s no-shows. That happened sometimes. Like anybody else, Gordon figured he could get busy with other things, only with him those other things usually involved his one-man war on crime. It was obvious to Gordon now that the bat was obsessed with his crusade, never clocking out. Just like any good detective, he kept his mind on the case at all times, and, also like any good detective, it was probably at the cost of having a social life.

What worried him now was that the Batman had shown up and looked down at them from afar, and had decided to leave and never speak to Gordon again for this betrayal. Would he do that? he wondered. It was hard to guess with the bat. Their relationship had always been purely professional, with hints at friendship. Surely they had referred to each other as “my friend” from time to time, but that didn’t mean anything. When it came to choosing between freedom and taking the chance of having his identity discovered, Gordon wagered that Batman would opt to sever all ties to remain free.

And, of course, having a secret identity was what made the bat so effective at what he did. He could not be leveraged with family or friends, or have known ailments used against him, or have any known vices or secrets held over his head. Like an officer working under deep cover, his secret identity was everything. Gordon had always figured Batman was some kind of government spook, but now it seemed the U.S. government truly didn’t know anything about his identity, or else they wouldn’t be coming to him. Who is this guy really? he wondered, not for the first time since meeting him. One thing was for certain, the Batman was a man possessing a willingness to ignore his own concerns in favor of the mission.

“Looks like your friend is either shy or busy tonight,” Sarah said, still nursing her cup of coffee.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Either that or he came and went when he saw this SUV parked here.” The alley behind Glen’s Bakery was just wide enough for the SUV to fit.

“It’s getting late. I say we try again another night.”

“All right,” Gordon said, secretly relieved.

Sarah turned on the car, the headlights automatically switching on. Gordon looked up, and gasped. He reached out for her hands on the steering wheel. “Wait,” he said, and nodded towards the windshield. Sarah looked, and her mouth parted just slightly.

The Batman was standing about ten feet in front of the SUV, the headlights now illuminating the blue-and-gray-suited figure, his cape draped low with enough slack that it barely settled on the ground. He was looking right at them, unmoving.

“Wow,” Sarah said, turning the car back off. “Now that’s an entrance.”

They stepped out together. Gordon was apprehensive, not knowing what to expect from the meeting between his two oldest partners. Sarah walked forward without the slightest sign of trepidation; in fact, she marched forward looking eager. There was that old mischievous smile on her face again. When they got within a few feet of the stoic figure, Sarah put her hands on her hips and muttered to Jim, “You wanna do the introductions?”

Gordon looked at the bat, whose countenance was as stony as ever. “First of all,” he said to him, “I want to apologize up front for doing this without consulting you first.” Batman said nothing. “But some changes have come through Gotham recently that I’m sure I don’t have to tell you about, but some o that includes changes to the way we’re running things. You’ve probably heard that the FBI is here to help us out. Well, this is Special Agent Sarah Essen, and she’s in charge of the bureau’s operations here now.”

Batman remained still, his eyes looking directly into Jim Gordon.

“Does he talk?” Sarah asked.

Batman’s eyes flicked over to her. At last, he spoke. “Is this someone you trust, Jim?”

Gordon nodded. “Besides you and my wife, Sarah’s the only person left that I’d trust with my life.”

“Then you’re aware of the two surveillance vans parked a block away?”

“The…?” Gordon rounded on Sarah quickly.

The FBI agent’s smile grew wider, until it split into a grin. “You are sharp.”

Gordon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You had us tailed here?”

“Relax, Jim—”

“Sarah…this is a confidential rendezvous point. I can’t believe you—” He cut himself off midsentence. “How many people now know that this is where he and I meet?” he demanded. She looked at him. “How many, Sarah?”

“Jim, you think I’m stupid? Of course I brought backup, but they have no idea why they’re here. I told them I might be meeting a contact somewhere in the area, and that they should expect a check-in from me every so often,” she said. “Who do you think I’ve been texting? If I didn’t check in every fifteen minutes they were to trace my cell phone. Otherwise, they’re in the dark, and for all they know I’m talking to a street-level informant in Grant Park across the street.”

Gordon shook his head. “You should’ve told me, Sarah,” he said, taking a tone with her he hadn’t ever taken before. “We’re supposed to be partners in this. If you want to open a line of communication with Batman then you’ve done a piss poor job of a first impression.” In all his time knowing her, Gordon had never inveighed against anything Sarah had ever done. She could be rambunctious in her duties, sure, but never deserving of anything more than a mild rebuke. This was going too far, she had compromised an informant, one she’d already agreed was of utmost importance.

“I’m in charge of a major operation to bring Gotham City back into Sanityville, Jim,” she said, looking back at the bat. “That means I’m rather important to the FBI at this moment, and couldn’t walk too far in a city this dangerous without at least one van following me. I’m not telling you that I’m important just to brag, just stating the facts.”

“You still should’ve told me—”

“Maybe I should’ve, and I apologize for not doing that, but can we please have this discussion later, after we’ve brought him up to speed?”

For a moment, the two of them just stared at one another, Gordon with a new measure of mistrust that he hadn’t thought would ever exist between him and Sarah. His wife had once said to him, “That woman is trouble.” He was beginning to wonder if there might have been some granule of wisdom in Barbara’s assessment of her.

Batman looked between them. “What is this about?” he said, breaking the silence that had grown thick between them.

Sarah turned her attention back to the bat. “We need your help,” she said, getting right to the point. “I know this meeting here is…a little strange for you. Believe me, it is for me, too. But the GCPD hasn’t got it together right now to handle the multiple threats it’s facing. You and Jim helped weed out corrupt police officers once upon a time, and while that’s certainly a good start it’s also left the whole force understaffed. The increased hours and lack of vacation time approval has led to even more leaving, including mid-level undercover guys that were integral because of the connections they had made in the streets. Those people are irreplaceable.” She looked at Gordon, and then back at Batman. “I’m gonna trust you with something now, to make up for anything I’ve done tonight that you may feel was deceitful—we believe Marcellus Walden is working with the Gotham mobs.”

This got the bat’s attention, Gordon noted, because he cocked his head to one side; it was more movement than he usually performed. Usually, he just stood there, as inert as the stars in the sky, while he and Gordon swapped information. “The mayor?”

“We believe so,” she was quick to put in. “We can’t prove anything right now, nor do we really have any idea as to what extent he’s been helping them, but I imagine he’s been using his contacts within city council to keep various improvements from taking shape in the police force. It might explain why he’s been so laissez-faire on the topic.” She scratched the back of her neck. “And he might also be running for president someday.”

Gordon looked at her. “You didn’t tell me that.” He had tried to imagine Marcellus Walden as a corrupt, bought-off mob boy, and just couldn’t. No matter how much he didn’t like the bastard, he still couldn’t see that in the man. Power hungry though he obviously was to anyone who really stopped to evaluate his behavior, he still had that Julius Caesar complex, where he loved the city for loving him, and Gordon couldn’t pictured Walden being as corrupt as Sarah was suggesting, certainly not in league with “Nate” Stewart-Paulson.

Sarah explained, “The way we figure it, Walden’s the kind of politician who does things that he doesn’t really stop and think of as unethical—he’s another one of those politicians that just lost their way. Our profilers have analyzed the assertions our investigators have made, and compared them to his behavioral mannerisms. If he is guilty, then they feel he’s on automatic pilot. So if he’s ever received a bribe in his life, our profilers believe that he likely doesn’t think of it that way. At least, that’s the theory.”

The Batman eyed Sarah, and cogitated. Gordon figured he was probably trying to imagine Walden as a corrupt creature who wasn’t purposefully malevolent, as a man doing bad things on “autopilot” as Sarah put it, and wondering how well it fit the persona that the mayor tried to exude. Batman was probably also wondering whether or not he could trust yet another person in his circle of allies, which stemmed from police officials to informants in the street to anyone in his private life that he trusted with his secret. “What would you need from my end?” he finally asked. Gordon was a little surprised it was that easy.

“Information. Specifically, any information pertaining to Carmine Falcone’s operations, the Riddle Killer, the Juarezes, the Shukurs, the Calabrias, Dreaded Sun, the Molehill Mob, or Mulcoyisy ‘Nate’ Stewart-Paulson at this time.”

“A tall order,” Batman said. He looked between them again, still considering what he might share between this conspiracy of three.

“Sure it is. But the workload of the GCPD is piling up, and sharing the workload is in all our best interests right now.”

The bat didn’t speak, and for a moment Gordon thought he was just going to stand there all night, leaving them to talk to a wall. “I paid a visit to Cobblepot tonight,” he said at last.

“Yeah?” Sarah said, leaning in, interested. “Jim told me about this guy. What did he have to say?”

“Not much at first, but I put a little pressure on him, and I came up with a name: Parasyte.”

Gordon nodded. “A bunch of black hat hackers. We’ve investigated them before. Greg Copeland in our top Cyber Crimes Division has a file on them. They’ve hacked into the databases of Parnes Industries, Tachyon Power, Wayne Enterprises, and a bundle of other corporate powerhouses. They also hack into GCN’s website from time to time and post fake stories. They create hoaxes online all the time. They also hack into various systems in China to protest censorship.”

“Cobblepot says he gave Edward Nygma the online contact information of a member of Parasyte. He believes that information has changed by now, and I’m inclined to agree.”

“We can’t track them, then,” Gordon said.

Sarah said to Batman, “Got any ideas?”

He did, because he came out with it at once. “Do you have any people in the press who could run a story for you?”

“Wouldn’t be much of an FBI agent if I didn’t,” she said.

“I need you to run a story about how one of the focuses of the FBI coming to Gotham is to fortify major systems against hacking. Say it’s because of the power grid hack that allowed someone to get to Patrick Tralley’s account information. Don’t mention Parasyte by name, but let it be known that the FBI is confident that there is no way possible for any major hacker attacks to be conducted against the city’s major companies and its systems.”

Sarah smiled. “You’re issuing a challenge to them,” she said. “What for?”

“Honeypots,” he said.

“Honeypots?”

“Yes. Data that appears to be an integral part of a network, but is actually isolated and monitored. A trap. If you make the honeypot look enticing enough, they’ll come to it, thinking it’s lucrative information. But, in that honeypot your people will create a trace program, and when they come to get it…”

“We’ll be able to trace them without them knowing it,” she said, nodding admirably. “Not bad. Might work. But how could we be sure it was Parasyte who took the bait and not any number of other hacker groups? And how could we be sure in which company’s systems to plant the honeypots?”

“Have one of their major targets issue another challenge through the press,” Batman said. “But make this one more direct. Mention Parasyte specifically, and state that attacks on the company would no longer be tolerated. Hackers like nothing more than to prove to big bully corporations that they can go wherever they please, whenever they please. By the time all of this winds up in the press, there ought to be several honeypots ready within that company’s system.”

“Which company issues the challenge?” Sarah asked.

“Which company has been hit the most by Parasyte?” Batman countered.

“Wayne Enterprises,” Gordon said. “No doubt about that. Copeland says that Parasyte’s pet project has been anything having to do with WE ever since they showed up on Cyber Crimes Division’s radar.”

“Talk to the people at Wayne Enterprises, then, and make sure they’re okay with this,” Batman said. “After everything’s tossed out into the press, there’s nothing more to do than wait for Parasyte to make a move.”

“All right, sounds good,” Sarah said. “What else did this Cobblepot tell you?”

“Not much, but I managed to get him to confess to being more than just what he seems. He’s an information broker, all right, so you were right about that, Jim,” Batman said. “He has a large office upstairs that doubles as an aviary. I think there’s a lot more in there than birds, too. I was rushed when I left, his people came after me, but there’s more there that he’s not telling. I’d suggest more visits, and deeper surveillance of the Iceberg Lounge. Maybe send some undercovers to go in once every two or three nights, drop some mics around the place, get them recognized as regulars to the nightclub, chat up the patrons, all that. If they can, they should try to get close to Cobblepot.”

“We’re so shorthanded…” Gordon said.

“We’ll send some of our own people in there,” Sarah offered. “They’ve done this shtick a time or two before.”

Batman nodded curtly. “Good. They’ll need to be subtle. He’s a wily one, I can tell you that. He’s on the lookout for anything suspicious. He pretends to be very casual, very sophisticated, but he’s sly. He has hidden weapons, at least one gun that he hides within an umbrella, and safes hidden in the floor with more money than a nightclub owner has any right to have lying around. And his people are well trained, they were moving in a bounding overwatch, so they’ve got experience.” He looked at Gordon. “He’s taken serious precautions, so anyone who goes in there should do the same.”

Sarah cleared her throat. “Is there any indication that Cobblepot is a part of Nate’s organization, or that he might know where to find him?”

“I’ve never seen a more well-placed information broker. I’ve been doing this a long time, and he moves and speaks like one of the smart ones. He was very confident and mostly unafraid of me, even though I showed up unannounced and made threats,” Batman admitted. “If his money is any indication of how good he is at what he does and how sophisticated his operations are, then there’s every indication that if there’s something worth knowing, he knows it.”

Sarah nodded. “Good enough for me. I’ll call Washington, and I should have the warrants for clandestine surveillance by morning.”

“One other thing, Agent Essen. This man shot at me tonight.” He pointed to the indentation on his body armor. “Admittedly, I was an intruder, but I hadn’t done anything more than talk to him yet. He clearly has no qualms about killing people. If your people get found out, they’ll disappear, and you’ll never see them again. This is that kind of operation.”

“Got it. Anything else?”

“Just keep me informed of anything you find out about Parasyte. Maybe I can help.”

“What’ll you be doing in the meantime?” Sarah asked.

“What I always do,” he said, walking backwards a couple of steps before he turned and walked out of the reach of the SUV’s headlights.

Sarah looked at Gordon. “What did that mean?”

It was his turn to smirk. “It means it’s back to the streets for him. C’mon, the ball’s in our court now,” he said. When they got back inside the car, Gordon said, “And the next time you pull something like that again, your bat privileges are revoked.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, chuckling and carefully backing out of the alley. “Duly noted, Commissioner.”