CHAPTER 24

“I think the cook here is trying to kill me,” Gordon said, pushing his breakfast away from him. In truth, it wasn’t the food, it was his appetite. He hadn’t had an appetite lately, and he knew it was the stress robbing him of it.

They sat in Pete’s Uptown Restaurant on the corner of Fifth and Main. Gordon was just checking his texts, which had come from Barb. She had sent pictures of the kids waving at the screen. In one of them, James was holding up a sign that said “Hi Daddy” and in the background Barbara’s mother was getting ready to throw a Frisbee for her dog, Milo. Damn it, Barb, he thought, feeling both love and resentment towards his wife at the moment. Maybe she wasn’t actually using the kids to try and lure him away, but it sure felt like it.

Across from him, Sarah sat checking her texts, too, while intermittently glancing up to look out the bay window facing the street. Sarah Essen and Jim Gordon were both there, and yet not there, both off in their own little worlds for the moment, each checking in on their own people.

Finally, after her coffee had been brought and she’d had her first sip, Sarah looked up at him and said, “Some of my guys got sent out on a call last night to investigate the suspects taken in from Ackerman’s Auto. One of them is talking about your friend.” She looked a little distressed. “Jim, they’re saying he got shot. A couple of my guys found a small blood trail in the dirt, but they lost it not too far from the chop shop.”

Gordon put his phone away and looked up at her. His mind was still half on Barb and the kids, which wasn’t good. It preoccupied his thoughts too much these days, took his focus away from Stewart-Paulson, Cobblepot, Nygma, the Falcones, the Shukurs, the Calabrias, and the Juarezes. “He’ll come through,” Gordon said. “He always does.” He took a sip of his own coffee, still thinking about Barb and the kids.

“What happens when he doesn’t, though?” she asked, accepting her bagel from the waitress who swept by their table. “Everybody’s got their limits, Jim. Even him.”

“Well,” he sighed, “when that happens, maybe I will join Barb and the kids with their mother, after all.”

Sarah took a bite of her bagel and cocked an eyebrow. “Retire?”

“Who knows? If he goes down, then that pretty much takes away the last ace we had up our sleeves.”

“Jim, you insult me! You still have us. You still have your people on the force.”

“It’s gonna take more than that to get things done in this city these days. A lot more.”

Sarah considered him for a moment, watching him with those green eyes that had almost—just almost—captured his heart over a decade ago. “You put a lot of stock in him, don’t you?” she said.

“It’s a new world, Sarah. Terrorists, hackers, and smugglers aren’t playing by the same rules as they were just ten years ago,” Gordon said, taking another sip of coffee. “And neither can we. It doesn’t matter how many warrants Washington gives you, or how many arrests they give permission for, or what kind of permanent presence you and your people establish here in Gotham. If our techniques of investigation don’t adapt, how do we stay alive?”

“Well, you’re right about that,” she said. “Still, I wouldn’t give up on the law enforcement people you’ve got around you, Jim. There are still good people all around you. I know, I’ve met them.”

“I don’t doubt it. But something’s germinating inside our politicians, something twisted. They’re playing with people’s lives like it’s a game, not taking it seriously anymore. The money necessary to improve our programs isn’t coming down the pipeline to us. If we weren’t fighting back with the bat, then what would we be fighting back with?”

Sarah took an even more inquisitive look. “You think the bat is a direct response by the people? You think he was, what, conjured up by them?”

“I don’t know about conjured,” Gordon said. “I’m not much one for poetry, so I don’t quite know how to put it, but he was undoubtedly voted into the position. He’s like the rest of us—fed up. He’s inspired wannabes and fakes, and a lot of schoolchildren talk about him like he’s got some kind of cool street cred—he’s in our social consciousness now. We’re not running away from him, and he’s not running away from us anytime soon. For better or worse, the bat is here to stay.”

“Until someone takes him out,” Sarah added.

Gordon ran a finger over his mustache. “There’s that possibility,” he said, and took another sip of his coffee. One thing that hadn’t changed about Sarah was that she never got tired of playing devil’s advocate, or of reminding him that there were more harsh realities waiting for him just around the corner.

Back in their first years with the force, Sarah had often talked with him about how doomed society was to repeat its sins over and over again for all eternity. Having been a history major in college, she could speak at great lengths on the topic and find a way of proving her point in the face of almost any counterargument. Gordon had been an idealist when he first started out as a beat cop, and had always believed that Sarah secretly liked nagging at him because she found it somewhat attractive to see an idealistic young man squirm whenever his storybook vision of the future was tested. She’d once told him that it was one of the things that had attracted him to her, though Gordon never understood it.

As if reading his mind, Sarah suddenly asked, “Whatever happened between us, Jim?”

He glanced up at her. “Sorry?” He’d been caught in between thinking about his family, his past, and his hopes that Batman hadn’t finally met his end the night before.

“Us,” she said, shrugging. “What happened?”

Gordon sighed, and shook his head. “Sarah…”

“It’s just a question, Jim. I’m not trying to get fresh.”

He looked at her. “Nothing ‘happened.’ There was no ‘happening’ at all. I met Barbara, fell in love with her, and that was that.”

“But why? It seemed like we had a good thing going there for a minute.”

Gordon shrugged, and took another sip. “People change,” he said. “We evolve. Sometimes we evolve in different directions. You were obviously going one way, and I was going another.”

“What way was I going?”

He smiled. “You were headed for the top. Everybody could see that. Ambitious, energetic, opinionated, and willing to piss people off to get your way. Oh yeah, you were headed straight to the top.”

“And you weren’t?”

Gordon gave that some thought. He glanced out the window, at a group of three little girls playing hopscotch on the sidewalk. It made him think of his daughter for a brief moment—she loved hopscotch up until a year ago. Now she was interested in ballet. He and Barbara had talked about enrolling her in a dance school to learn. “I didn’t think I was headed for the top of anything,” he said. “Maybe make detective someday, that’s always a goal, but more for the salary increase than anything else. It wasn’t a calling, per se, but it would’ve been just fine by me to be a detective until retirement. Never thought that one day I’d be over the chief of police.”

“You have the bat to thank for that, too?”

Gordon watched the girls play at hopscotch a moment longer, mulling Sarah’s question over. “I suppose so,” he said.

“You wouldn’t have asked for it otherwise?”

He chuckled. “I wouldn’t even have dreamt to ask,” he said. “Leadership’s not my thing. Just ask my wife. She runs everything in the house, and not because she’s so bossy, but because I generally don’t feel my opinion matters very much.” Gordon shook his head. “I mean, I certainly have an opinion on things—like I believe my guys on the force deserve better leadership, maybe even better than what I’ve given them—I just never paraded my opinion out for everyone to see like you did.”

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“Sometimes the most reluctant leader is the best one, Jim,” Sarah said. She leaned back and followed his gaze out to the girls. One of them had fallen down, and they were all giggling. “Maybe you were meant to be here, at this time in Gotham’s history. You say the people voted in the bat unconsciously, so maybe they did the same for you.”

Gordon shrugged. “If you say so.”

“Oh, I forgot, you’re not one for poetry.”

“Well, it’s just that—” His phone buzzed. “Hang on.” He took it out of his pocket. It was a text from Chief Clay Chapman: Have you seen the news? That was all it said, which Gordon felt was very ominous. Rather than answer the text, he used his phone to go GCN’s site, and at first he saw nothing significant. One of the major headlines was the Joker’s release from the hospital, and that he would be moved back to Arkham sometime in the next forty-eight hours (the exact time remained unknown, of course, to keep the clown safe from more assassins).

The article went on to say that Judge Troy Stewart, after conferring with doctors, would give the clown a month to recuperate before standing trial again.

Was that all Clay meant? he wondered. If so, it didn’t seem important enough to text about.

Then, he was momentarily shocked to see his face attached to another story at the center of the screen. The headline made him lose any appetite he might’ve had left.

CITY COUNCIL SEEKS TO QUESTION POLICE COMMISSIONER GORDON:

Conduct With the Batman Cited as Concern, as well as Inefficiency Running GCPD and Communicating With City’s Leaders

Story by Leonard Guzman

“Jim, what is it?” Sarah said.

Gordon shook his head in bewilderment. “How…is he doing this?”

“Jim?”

He read through the first half of the story:

CITY HALL, Gotham City – Days after the startling audio recordings that revealed a major disconnect between Gotham’s mayor and its police commissioner, and a repudiation from Mayor Walden this morning in a statement made to reporters, members of city council for Gotham have moved to investigate claims that Police Commissioner James Gordon has purposefully ignored all requests to sit down with the mayor and the city’s other leaders to discuss the problems of escalation in the city. The gentler implication of this is incompetence on the commissioner’s part, the harsher implications being that Gordon willfully misled the city’s leaders.

Mayor Walden was quoted this morning as saying, “I have tried to talk with Jim Gordon on numerous occasions for over a year now, and have been continually ignored and evaded. I have been exceedingly patient because of his previous record, but it’s obvious to me now that he has another agenda, one that allows him to shirk the responsibility for his ineptitude. He has been playing games to avoid discussing the serious problems we face. Now is not the time for games, not with a serial killer, increased gang numbers, and heavy violence growing in our streets. We have to settle these issues now.”

Mayor Walden went on to cite numerous calls he’s had to his office from policemen, both of high and low rank, demanding to know why problems of decreased numbers and outmoded equipment weren’t being addressed. It is the job of the city’s police commissioner to inform him of such dire needs. Walden said that he had been given to believe, by James Gordon, that those issues weren’t as necessary as some claimed and that only more training was required. Walden said that Gordon painted him a different picture, one of a police force persevering, irrespective of the various trials and tribulations it has faced.

The mayor said that officers were encouraged not to contact City Hall, and that Gordon would handle it all. Walden said he had no way of knowing the need of Gotham’s police force was so dire.

The mayor practically blamed James Gordon outright for many of the problems the city now faces in crime-detection and prevention.

Walden said, “This, admittedly, has revealed an embarrassing disconnect between this city’s leaders, and I promise the people of Gotham City that, as your mayor, I will rectify this situation. You deserve better than this.”

Gordon read it and reread it, struck by the inaccuracies, the bold lies that must have been told behind the scenes, the incredible amount of clout Walden had with city council members, and the sheer audacity it took for the mayor to twist the facts around so that it appeared that Gordon had been the one refusing to meet with Walden, not the other way around.

“Jim? Jim, are you hearing me?”

He realized that Sarah had been talking to him all along. Finally, he looked up, and handed her the phone to read the headline. Sarah’s countenance never changed. In fact, she looked positively calm, as though she were reading a recipe for something rather plain instead of an indictment on Jim Gordon’s entire character.

“He’s getting desperate,” Sarah said, handing the phone back over to him. “Or, more likely, the people pulling the strings behind him are getting desperate. They’ve pushed him to get rid of you.”

“But why?”

“Because you’re the last politico still standing up to him,” Sarah said. “You’re it, Jim. You’re all that stands between having a rational, civilized society and having Gotham’s entire political system run by the mobs. The Joker divided them, but Nygma and Cobblepot, they’re bringing them all together under one roof. It’ll be just the Five Families in New York City; but instead of the Gambinos, Genoveses, Bonannos, Colombos and Luccheses, it’ll be the Falcones, Shukurs, Juarezes, Calabrias, and maybe even Edward Nygma and Oswald Cobblepot.” She made a pained face. “Maybe even the Suns and the Molehill Mob. Word is, they’re getting hookups from Mulcoyisy Stewart-Paulson.”

“I still can’t imagine I’m such a major target,” Gordon said. “He’s got everybody else around me—city council, City Hall, and now maybe even the people on the force. He’s got me surrounded on all sides by bureaucracy, so why even bother with me or—?”

“Because you stand with the bat, Jim. Think about it. You just said that the bat has this kind of street cred that the youth in this city dig, and that exploited middle- and lower-class also have a secret love for, so as long as the bat has an aura of ‘cool’ and authenticity, and you’re in office feeding him inside information…well, you figure it out.”

Gordon could scarcely believe what he was hearing. The Joker divided them, but Nygma and Cobblepot, they’re bringing them all together under one roof. She was right, of course. At least, that’s how it all seemed to be coming together. “Can’t we, I dunno, go after Walden right now? Do your people in Washington have enough on him yet to…?”

Sarah was already shaking her head. “No, nothing rock solid, and my bosses at the bureau are worried about wrongly accusing a major politician.”

“So, what do I do now?” he asked.

“You go to City Hall when they call you before a formal hearing and you answer all of their questions.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” she said.

“Sarah, I’ll be sworn in. I’ll have to either tell the truth, and give them everything I know about Batman, or else lie under oath.”

Sarah shrugged. “Do what you gotta do, Jim,” she said. “I’ll tell you this much, though, my superiors in Washington have seen this coming for a long, long time, this conjoining of Gotham’s criminals—it happens in any place where more than one criminal syndicate has been elevated at the same time. It gets bloody at first, but then…an understanding gets reached. It’s still a little ragtag right now, what with the Molehill Mob and the Suns being so disorganized, but they’re getting better at their game. I hear the guns and ammo the Mob used last night were advanced, and most of them had SWAT-style body armor. The charges they used to blow open the vault were also sophisticated, as was their plan to get the money to Ackerman’s chop shop to sneak it away and launder it. The bat says the Shukurs have a presence at Rogers Yacht Basin right now,” she said, tapping the table with her finger. “You weren’t kidding, Jim. You are being surrounded. We all are. They’re trying to take us over.”

“Us?”

“This city,” she said. “Hell, maybe the country, since Walden’s been talking to presidential campaign managers.”

Gordon nodded. “If what you’re saying is all really happening behind the scenes, then the Riddler—the Riddle Killer, I mean—he’s just a distraction. Like Stewart-Paulson, another elusive no one that we all chase after, and might not even be there. It’s the only reason organized criminals would seek help from a serial killer, from someone who would otherwise only draw attention from feds like you.”

Sarah nodded. “That’s our feeling, as well. The Riddle Killer is almost certainly a distraction from the real threat, forcing us to spread thin an already beleaguered police force…but…he may also be meant to discredit Batman,” she said. “It’s something I’ve considered, just toyed with, the notion that this craziness might be meant to reflect the Joker’s lunacy, drive home the point that Batman makes things worse, not better, by inspiring these lunatics to their theatrics. It could be an attempt to turn Gothamites against him and his tactics. If it is, it’s actually quite subtle.”

Gordon shook his head in wonderment at the potential depth of it all. “You think the Riddler’s antics could be a smear campaign?” he said. “They’re letting Nygma collect innocent victims off the street and kill them just to unpopularize Batman?”

“Maybe. And you, by association.” Sarah leaned forward. “Jim,” she said, “this is a well-formulated plan. It must’ve taken them years to build this, maybe a decade or more, just to get everything in alignment. The mob’s are taking over Gotham, and without a thermonuclear weapon or threat of releasing a biological agent—they’re getting into politics. They’re taking over the legal system.”

It boiled Gordon’s blood to think of these people all trying to play puppeteer with people’s lives, controlling the city by their emotions. Part of him wanted to stand up right then, leave the restaurant, and storm into City Hall to slap cuffs on Walden’s wrists, with no explanation. The man deserved to be in jail for lying with monsters like Nygma and Cobblepot.

A text came to his phone. It was from Barb, saying: Jim, we should talk. No doubt she had just read the story herself, as would everyone else around Gotham.

Commissioner Gordon didn’t even know how to answer his wife at the moment. He looked across the table at Sarah, who had calmly gone back to eating her bagel and watching the girls outside play hopscotch. This whole city’s coming down around our ears and she still has an appetite, he thought. That’s why she was meant to lead, and I wasn’t.

After a few minutes of silence between them, Sarah actually smiled and said, “Think of it this way, Jim, at least things can’t get any worse.”

She spoke too soon.