CHAPTER 3

Veiled as the skies were by the dark clouds, the signal would be obvious to anyone who looked up. Even from miles away, he could see it. Gordon wanted to chat. He’ll have to wait, he thought. But that was okay. Gordon had gotten used to waiting. He was an important man these days, acting as liaison between Gotham’s police forces and the city’s politicians. The last he’d seen of Gordon, he’d started getting his first gray hairs. They had been through a lot together, and he hoped that his only true ally on the law enforcement side of things lived a long, healthy life. The Batman intended to see that he did, not just for practical purposes, but because Jim Gordon was a good man. There weren’t many of those left in Gotham these days. The last one had been Harvey Dent and, well, look how that turned out.

Gordon hadn’t been police commissioner all that long, and already he was getting death threats. Most of them could probably be ignored, but it only took that one committed individual, like the Joker had been, and suddenly it was very real. It only took a copycat, or someone else seeking to make a name for themselves, and Gordon would go the way of the previous police commissioner.

Looking at that signal wasn’t just a beacon to the citizens of Gotham, and it wasn’t just a request for his assistance. No, the signal sent a message. It told the criminals of Gotham that there was a shadowy, unknown creature out there still looking for them. It gave them something to fear again, since they no longer really feared the police. They didn’t know if the bat was just one man or an army, if he was a vigilante with no rules or a U.S. secret operative with special privileges and allowances.

The signal also sent a message to the Batman. It said: You are not alone, my friend. Despite what others thought, despite the excuses he had to make for the usage of the signal, Gordon still wasn’t giving up on him, and Batman hadn’t given up on him, either. They couldn’t allow their relationship to deteriorate, not after all the progress they had made, not after all they had been through together.

Presently, Batman looked around, surveying the area again. He was back on the Laddmann building, occupying a different window than before. He hoped that Clarence Mulligan hadn’t caused him to miss anything pivotal in the area. If he had, then it could be another week or more before the Batman caught sight of his next major target. That is always assuming, of course, that the information was solid.

The storm had receded some. Thunder rolled in the east, a disgruntled murmur from the beast in its retreat.

Rain still trickled down his mask, across the exposed part of his face, and down the neck inside his suit. His eyes raked across the old empty streets around Laddmann, sometimes viewing them through NV (night-vision), IR (infrared), or just his naked eyes.

He couldn’t get the image of the woman completely out if his mind. As abused as she had been, she had still looked up at Batman, her savior, with trepidation, even terror. As terrible as her abuser had been, he had not inspired enough fear for her to flee. She’ll return to him within the week, he thought grimly. Yes, like many victims in and around the Bowery, the woman was of the sort that felt she deserved what was coming to her, at least on some level. Her eyes had told the story.

A car honked somewhere far off, probably over on Harvey Dent Highway. Tires screeched. More honking, and some shouting. A near collision. Somewhere else, someone shouted at someone else to turn that damn music down. Someone else was calling for their dog or cat to come home, perhaps lost in the storm. On the police scanner, he heard a woman say, “All units in the vicinity, be advised of a three-eleven reported at Brison Ferry Road.” A 311: that was indecent exposure. Nothing that required his immediate attention.

This part of the city had a special odor on nights like tonight. Batman could detect the strong chemical odor wafting over from the Parnes Industries chemical plant, despite the fact that the EPA had ordered them to take immediate steps to address what had been deemed harmful emissions—Wayne Enterprises had been one of the few companies to sign a petition, asking Parnes Industries to comply quickly, but to no avail. Each day, chemicals pumped out of the smokestacks, each of which had the company slogan written on the side: Optima Expectans.

The city’s many manifestations swirled around him, the sounds, the smells, the feel of the air after a springtime storm had passed, and the undercurrents crawling just underneath the skin of everything.

Things had been a little quiet of late. The Batman didn’t think that would last very long. Ask any detective in L.A. or beat cop in New York, and he’d tell you that lulls in violence are the calm before the storm. A few major items had been wrapped up, including a massive investigation into the drug trade by Gotham’s finest, the new appointment of James W. Gordon to police commissioner, and the hunt was finally dwindling for the one that the press had started referring to as “the Dark Knight.”

The drug trade had never taken root in Gotham as much as it had in places like L.A. or Atlanta, but it had sure come on within the last year. He had helped Gordon by going into places that ordinarily cops didn’t go, such as the Bowery, which on some days made Compton look like a nice place to vacation. Like the L.A. cops who steered clear of Compton, so too did the GCPD avoid driving through the Bowery at all costs. Wayne Enterprises had pushed for redeveloping the area for just that reason—the old criminologist’s broken window theory, if you don’t fix it up soon, it’ll only get worse—but had failed to convince either the city’s council or mayor to find room in the city’s budget, even though WE was offering them a great deal.

For a moment, the Batman considered Mayor Walden. He’d hoped Walden’s election would usher in a new era in Gotham, one that would bring a bit more sanity and reason to the major issues plaguing the city, and show the kind of temerity that was necessary to scare the vermin out of the shadows for good. He’d hoped for this, since Walden’s election had come on the tail end of major victories against the Faclone crime family. But, with a little over a year in, Marcellus Walden was shaping up to be just another meretricious political creature, at least that was the Batman’s opinion.

So, neglected as always, the Bowery fell to those who were now dubbed the Boweryfolk, and the Batman was one of the few who would actually go into the area. Without his presence, and the occasional visit from the GCPD, he feared the Bowery could easily turn into a series of slums as bad as those in Mumbai. This was the place that the Juarez cartel had come to in order to start their meth, heroin and cocaine labs. The Batman had pointed Gordon in the right direction, and after a few calculated busts with SWAT teams at the head—and a couple of bosses left chained up to lampposts with anonymous phone calls to the police department telling of their location—they had managed to stave off the incursion.

For the moment, he thought. Indeed, the Juarezes had found some other place to hide their narcotics, but exactly where they were hiding it was another mystery that Batman had been trying to solve for a year now.

It seemed any headway made in Gotham City was only for a moment, just enough for a short breath. All the past catastrophes and ordeals had left the city on higher alert. Things had already been in disarray due to the rampant police corruption back when Gordon had only been a lieutenant. The clown hadn’t helped matters, either. Now, “homegrown” and “terrorist” were the new buzzwords whenever a politician needed justification for newer, stricter laws in Gotham.

Things are coming to a head.

He was worried about that. Escalation, his friend Gordon had once told him, was the key to all of this. The good guys get guns, the bad guys get them, too. The good guys get body armor, the bad guys get armor-piercing rounds, or just start killing cops in their sleep and buying them off, since that was easier and more advantageous. And now, for a moment in time, the good guys had someone who didn’t bend to the politicians, who didn’t get caught up in the red tape long enough to let the criminals go, and who not only didn’t accept bribes, but crushed the fingers of the hand that offered them. They had a champion in their “Caped Crusader” (another nickname those few in the press used interchangeably with his standard moniker whenever they were showing actual favor towards his actions).

But that Caped Crusader was faceless and unknown. And now, the criminals have their own kinds of “heroes,” their own champions. He’d known things were bad after the Joker had come through and nearly brought the city to its knees, crippling it with fear. People had been afraid to leave their homes, more so than ever before, and all because of another unknown figure, this one with a painted face and colorful wardrobe, the exact opposite of the Dark Knight.

Then, there had been the riots on Molehill Street, incited by a gang calling themselves the Molehill Mob, who wore jackets with a giant, rabid mole on it, or else tattooed themselves with the mascot. Then came Dreaded Sun, another gang that was coming up in the Bowery and areas around it, and noticeable by the large, fiery-red sun across their chests, which were put there in a secret initiation ceremony. The Suns and the Mobsters had rioted together once, wreaking havoc up and down Parkinson Avenue. Before those riots, many in the press, and at the precincts, had already suggested that this notion of emblems and symbols had been started by the bat.

They’re right, he thought, glancing up the street as a pair of headlights suddenly materialized. The bat was the answer to the problem. But the bat is all part of the cycle. And now he was hearing about similar situations happening as far away as Metropolis. It’s changing. It’s all changing.

Yes, all of it. Changing. Theatricality and deception had now become a viable weapon in the minds of some of Gotham’s worst sorts. It was now in the Gotham “mindset,” embedded there forever. And I did that. The worst part was, it was still evolving, still escalating, and no one could deny it. The bombing at the Muslim Center was proof enough that it was happening.

The Muslim Center…that had him preoccupied, as well. Could he ever undo this problem? Was there an answer to escalation? There was a good riddle if he’d ever heard one.

All of these distractions were set in the future. He cast them aside and focused on the headlights below him as they approached the Laddmann building, sweeping underneath him. The headlights belonged to a gray, nondescript van that trundled on old pavement that was overgrown with grass and sloshed with runoff from the storm. The van pulled into an old, unused parking lot around the back of the building, meant for Laddmann’s employees back in the day; it, too, was overgrown and eroded by time and water. The van pulled up to a building that had once been a garage, then converted into a car salvage, and had finally been abandoned with an array of junkers left half gutted and rusting.

The bat watched for a time, and as the van came to a stop, he considered descending on it. No. Not yet. He felt something else. He had seen this sort of rendezvous before. The van turned off its lights, but his directional microphone allowed him to listen to the engine, which was still on. They’re waiting.

And so would he.

Finally, after about ten minutes, and after the rain had completely tapered off, another vehicle came splashing down the old road. It was an old Cadillac, but souped-up with new paint, flashy rims, and a ridiculously loud neon pink dashboard that glowed in the dark. Amateurs, he thought, looking at the Cadillac. He saw the Caddy approach the old van. Amateurs meeting with pros, who know how to keep things on the down-low. Worlds were colliding tonight, a rendezvous where the old guard met with the new bloods.

The Batman had been waiting on Stewart-Paulson’s men, who he knew to be an old hand at this game. Provided his informant’s information was accurate, he’d put good money on Stewart-Paulson’s people being in the van, and the Juarez people being in the souped-up vehicle, since they were relatively new in town.

As the Caddy passed underneath him, he figured it was safe to start making his move. Time to get closer.

The Batman didn’t think an aerial approach would suit him under these circumstances. It would get him closer and quicker, sure, but a chance look up even in this darkness might show an overly dark shape against the sky could do him in—criminals had come to know the general bat shape in the night sky, even if only by reputation and rumor. So he reached at his side to his the thigh holster on his right leg, where he clipped his GTEM gun (Grapnel gun, Tazer and EM emitter, or “Get Em” gun).

He flipped the setting to the grapple gun, and fired the grappling hook into the brick beside his foot before swinging himself over the side. The cord was made of Dyneema, like his innermost layer of body armor, which was an ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene material, having a yield strength of 2.4 GPa (350,000 psi) and had come from the leftovers after one of Wayne Enterprise’s military contracts had been completed. He hung there, squeezing the handle and the trigger to keep himself from falling, but then eased off of the trigger to release tension on the rope, allowing him to descend. The more he eased off of the trigger, he faster he dropped.

Once he landed, he thumbed the switch that sent a signal to the hook up top, commanding it to release its grip. One quick jerk ensured that it came away free and clear, and the GTEM gun reeled in the slack as fast as it dropped. He re-holstered the gun, and moved into the closest shadow. The moon was starting to peek out from behind the clouds now, providing enough light to expose him if he’d made his move by air.

The van and the Caddy were about eighty yards away from him, and from here he could spot through his NV setting that two men had gotten out. By using his HUD, he was able to zoom in on them, and even snapped a few shots to save them to his helmet’s onboard computer system. The fellow that had stepped out of the Caddy was very large to the point of obesity, and kept hiking up his pants that would never fit right at his size. He looked Latino, with hair done up in an afro, and a goatee that looked meticulously trimmed. He wore a gold chain around his neck and a bulky leather jacket, as though he were afraid of catching cold.

The fat man was talking to someone who had gotten out of the van, a fellow dressed far more businesslike and looked to be a regular at his local gym. Tall, bald, and muscular, he had the erect posture of ex-military, and was looking at the fat man very seriously while the fat man explained something.

The bat moved cautiously, keeping in a low crouch, judging when to move and when not to move—it was movement that the eye caught first, not color or shape or texture, but movement—and so he made sure to take advantage of every piece of cover and stay there. Whenever there was no cover, he simply got beside something and didn’t move, appearing as a dark pile of someone’s discarded trash bag tossed against a building, or an otherwise unexplainable and innocent growth coming out of the ground.

Between himself and the two parties currently having their discussion, there was a body of water. Neglect had allowed the parking lot to sink, and after such a heavy storm it became a small lake. The van and the Caddy had splashed across it easily. The bat, however, had stealth to consider.

He walked in what he’d been taught was called a “water walk.” He’d spent hours upon hours in the North Georgia Mountains walking through forests, stepping on pine cones and dried dead leaves to learn how to place the weight in order to minimize noise. He’d walked through creeks and rivers that rushed down the mountains, and through the ponds at the foot of the mountains, learning from wilderness survival experts just how primitive hunting cultures were able to emerge from water without being heard. His instructors had pointed out every little detail, such as how to come out of a body of water and not allow the knees to get ahead of the feet—if they did, droplets of water dropped off the edges, and made little splashing noises in the water—and demonstrated how it was best if one walked straight up, so that the water ran down the body and merged with the body of water, rather than falling into it. It might mean presenting oneself as a larger target, but that was sometimes the price to be paid for silence.

That’s where his suit helped out. The Batman’s suit (or, as Alfred insisted on calling it, the “batsuit”) was made of material that maximized light absorption—no shiny armor for him—and had been developed using fine carbon nanotubes, which created the darkest material on earth. But here, the material had been applied to assist in creating a dark blue-and-gray suit for him rather than black, since, obviously, blues and grays were much more difficult to see in the dark than pure black, especially such a dark tone of it. The new nanotube camouflage system reflected light weakly, and absorbed light strongly. Incidentally, using the material meant that the Batman would be even less detectable on radar, were that ever to be used against him, so that was a happy side effect.

Never can be too careful these days, he thought, glad of his recent upgrades. No, not with criminals ramping it up.

The two men were still talking, the fat one getting more animated, and starting to point at the bigger fellow, while the bigger fellow stood as still as a statue. The Batman was close enough now to use his directional microphone to pick up some of what was being said: “Don’t know if you got the message, hermano, but you…*static*…an’t understand if you…*static*…and this guy is cold-blooded, homes. I ain’t even playin’. A stone cold killa, ya feel me?”

Using his HUD, he activated the recording system, taking in everything these thugs were saying so that he could revisit it later if need be.

The water got just above ankle-deep in places, and the bat emerged from the water as quietly as humanly possible. There were a few empty oil drums that the homeless in the area had used to burn fires, but the users were nowhere in sight tonight and so he used the drums for cover on approach. There was a lot of empty space between himself and the drums, though, so Batman dropped to a low crouch, and slowly slid down to his belly and allowed his cape to spread out around him—another benefit of the cape was that it broke up his human form whenever he went flat on the ground, or whenever he used one arm to bring it up above his head, removing his telltale edges.

It was also important for Batman to understand chiaroscuro, the study of the interplay between light and shadow. What little light there was could still produce varying degrees of shadow, and his knowledge of it enabled him to tailor his movements to his environment at any given time.

He scout-crawled another ten yards, pushing first with his toes, inch-worming along, and sliding across the ground. He stopped twenty yards away, when he could finally make out everything they were saying.

“I can’t help it if you don’t like what you were paid,” the big, bald man in the business suit was saying. These were the first words he’d spoken, and he was looking coldly into the fat Latino’s eyes. “You were paid what was agreed upon.”

“That was before I knew what all o’ this entailed, muchacho. Them’s the breaks, right, guys?” He glanced back into the Caddy, where two other Latinos sat in the back seat, one of them holding an AK-47 in his lap like it was his girl. They all nodded their agreement to their fat leader. “See? Even they agree. Now, the stakes’ve obviously gone up, homes. We did what we had to do, and now ya want us to just leave? With what we know? With the knowledge we could let slip to somehow else? My friend, that’s not smart. Bunch o’ loco guys like us, if we get drunk, say, tomorrow night, that knowledge may start to slip out to other people’s ears. You don’t want that, muchacho. But if we got paid what we were really worth on this job, now that might keep us sober for longer in that situation, know what I mean, homes?”

“Yes,” said the big bald man. “I think I know what you mean.”

The van was to the bald man’s back, the engine still running. There was movement from the driver’s seat, and Batman glanced in that direction. He zoomed in, watched the driver closely. His head was swiveling around, sometimes looking at the bald man and the fat man, and other times he seemed to be looking elsewhere, to his left and up a little bit, towards the sky. Batman followed his gaze. Was there a helicopter that he was looking at, perhaps afraid that the cops were doing surveillance on them?

No. There are no helicopters in the area right now. Batman scanned the area some more, still listening to the pair of gangsters work out their new payment arrangement while he searched the neighboring buildings. Off in the east about a quarter of a mile, there was an apartment complex, this one actually occupied, although in a couple years it would probably be condemned, as well. It was called Tannenberry Heights. A few lights were on in the windows of the Heights, but only one of them stuck out to the bat.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

A man stood by the parapet of a balcony on the sixth floor, looking down and around with a pair of binoculars pulled up to his eyes. In front of him, he had a long object that Batman’s zoom feature couldn’t quite relay to him in adequate pixels, but it was clear what the man hand in his hands. Sniper, he thought. Some predetermined signal from the driver would doubtless give the rifleman the go-ahead.

This rendezvous was getting far more interesting. The bat was still flat on his stomach, and had gotten within fifteen yards of the two men, still ensconced in shadow as he slowly scout-crawled and panned his head around. He took snapshots of the license plates. He’d run those by Gordon later, maybe.

“So,” the bald man was saying, “you’re saying that a further thirty percent is required, in order for you to, ah, maintain discretion.”

“Hey, you understand perfectly, amigo!” said the fat man, clapping the bald man on his shoulder while the chains around his neck rattled. He glanced back into the Caddy, and looked at his two friends in the back seat. “See, I tol’ you these were smart guys. Really, really smart, eh?” He chuckled.

That’s when Batman saw it. A small, bright flame was lit by the driver of the van, just as he was putting something in his mouth. He was lighting a cigarette. The signal!

He didn’t have time. Confident that the sniper would be firing within the next ten seconds, the Batman performed a push-up and came up to one knee, his cape sliding up around him, sticking to the muddy earth a little. He unholstered his GTEM gun, and thumbed it to the tazer setting. With the gun held at ready-low position, he crept forward two steps, to get a better angle around the big bald man, and took aim at the fatty.

“Now, homes, at what point can my friends an’ I expect t—?”

Batman squeezed the trigger, and the dart-like electrodes shot out silently, nailing the fat man center mass. His sensory and motor nerves were overloaded, and he went down in midsentence. He went to his knees, arms at his side, his whole body quivering while he squealed in confusion and fear. The bald man standing in front of him leapt backwards into the side of the van, knowing that this wasn’t part of the plan, and showing genuine emotion for the first time.

When the sniper shot finally came, it missed the fat man just as he plopped face first into the muddy earth. The bullet ricocheted off of the back end of the Caddy, and the two pals of the fat man sitting in the back suddenly opened up with their AKs, spraying out the side of the car as one of them leapt into the front seat and kicked the thing into drive. A couple of the bullets hit the bald man in his chest, and one in his arm. He must’ve been wearing serious body armor under that suit, because he was still able to fling himself into the van when the side door slid open for him.

“Get us outta here!” the bald man shouted.

As the Caddy peeled out, the men inside leaving their boss lying where he’d fallen, it spat out bullets at the van, which turned and drove in the opposite direction. A person in the back of the van fired back with a pistol, and the sniper started raining down bullets on the Caddy as it fled into the night. Glass shattered and at least one tire on the Caddy blew out.

Batman stood and ran towards the fallen fat man, retracted the electrodes, and took an auto-injector from the back pouch of his utility belt. The injector gave the fat man the effects of four grams of a concoction that gave a high-potency short-to-intermediate-acting 3-hydroxy benzodiazepine drug. It had all five intrinsic benzodiazepine effects: anxiolytic, amnesic, sedative/hypnotic, anticonvulsant and muscle relaxant.

The fat man started to rise, but then dropped back down onto his face. Batman knew that he couldn’t just leave the fat man where he was, because the sniper would soon return his attention to him after the Caddy had escaped. Lying there, prone, the fat man was an all-too-easy target. He rolled the fat man over, lifted him up by the armpits, and started pulling. As strong as he was, as much cardio workouts as he had put himself through, the Batman still had trouble with this more-than-three-hundred-pound gorilla. He had been trying to develop a muscle suit to increase his strength a bit more, but Lucius was still working out the kinks. For now, he would have to do be content with hiding the fat man behind the empty oil drums, and hope that the sniper didn’t find him—if he stayed out here in the open any longer looking for cover, the sniper would eventually find him, and the batsuit was terrific for small arms fire, but a high-powered sniper rifle? That was a different story.

Once the fat man was adequately hidden, the Batman spun quickly and started running after the van. It had headed to the other end of the parking lot, but it was a dead end that way, so that meant they had had to turn around. When they did, it meant slowing down to a manageable speed for what he had planned.

The van spun and started heading towards him, one of the headlights busted out from a bullet. It hydroplaned in the flooded parking lot, causing it to go temporarily out of control. He got out of the way, and let it go by him. He thumbed the switch to set the grappling hook setting on his gun. Just as the van was passing by, he fired off the grappling hook, hitting one of the back doors. He locked in it, and then held on. The van was only going about ten miles an hour when it jerked him along. He held on tightly, hitting the pavement and splashing through the water as the van dragged him almost the length of a football field, still picking up speed. He released his grip on the trigger, and the GTEM gun reeled him up to the back doors, which were riddled with bullets.

“Christ!” he heard one of the guys inside the van shout. The directional microphone allowed him to hear what was going on inside. He could make it out just as they started to peel away. “Is it the cops?”

“I don’t see any lights or hear any sirens!” someone else shouted.

“Who, then?!”

“It’s the bat,” someone said in a calm, deteached voice. It sounded like the voice of the bald man, his tone quite even despite having been shot.

“What the hell? Are you sure?!”

“You wanna go back and look?” The sound of a painful grunt. “Here, one of you help me get this vest off.”

“Christ, man, you’re bleeding!”

“Thank you, Hughes. I don’t think I would’ve known that without your help.” Another grunt. “What about McMillan? Anybody made contact with him? Did he manage to shoot the others before they got away?”

“That’s a negative!” someone else shouted, it sounded like it came more from the front; the driver’s seat. “McMillan said that he thinks he clipped the one in the back seat, but the driver still got them outta there! He said that—” The driver suddenly stopped talking, and then said, “Uh…guys? I’m seeing something flapping in my rearview mirror! Did one o’ you leave something hanging out the back d—?”

Damn it, they saw his cape!

Batman wasted no time. He flung the left door open, taking the initiative and reaching inside to grab one of the men. There were three of them in the back, including the wounded bald man on the floor of the van. They all turned and looked in great surprise, one of them, a younger man, going wide-eyed and leaping into the passenger’s side seat. The other man, of brown hair and looking to be in his mid-thirties, already had a fully automatic machine pistol in his hand, a Steyr M1912, and aimed it at the bat and opened fire immediately.

One of the bullets clipped Batman on the shoulder as he ducked his head and body back out, hanging onto the handle of the right-side door and his toes hanging onto the bumper. It was wet and slippery, and as the shots were fired the driver lurched the van from one side to another. His feet came away, but he held on with one hand to the door and managed to pull himself back up.

“Kill that bastard!” the driver shouted.

Just as Batman was coming back up onto the bumper of the van, the man with the machine pistol reached out with his gun and peeked around the door. The bat reached out with his free hand and snatched the barrel of the gun, twisted the wrist around and wrenched it free. The gunman lost his balance and reached out to the bat to keep himself from falling out. Batman flung the gun away and grabbed the man by the side of his head and slamming it against the door three times.

Just then, the van lurched again, taking a hard left, the tires screeching as it flung Batman to one side, releasing his hold of the criminal and causing one of his feet to slip free from the bumper. The criminal would have fallen out, if the bald man hadn’t overcome his own injuries to reach out and grab him by the collar, pulling him back inside as the van nearly spun out of control.

The driver tried to get them back on course, but overcorrected, and just as the van was starting to fishtail, Batman’s free leg smashed against a lamppost at the side of the street, sending such force up through him that he nearly lost his grip on the door. He managed to hang on for another few seconds before the driver overcorrected once again, and the van nearly tipped over sideways. This time the van crashed through an old mailbox on the sidewalk, and just as it was settling back down again, someone on the inside kicked the other rear door open.

When the door flung wide, the bat was left hanging out on the side of the van, taking debris and getting his cape perilously close to getting caught in the wheels. That was no good. So he tapped his right boot in such a way that the crampon extension came out. He kicked upwards, digging the sharpened steel into the side of the van, giving himself a foothold in the side of the van and now placing him horizontal. He reached up to the top of the door with one hand, and pulled himself up enough to reach for the van’s roof. After a few seconds of uncertain climbing, he pulled himself up and over, flopping on the roof.

“He’s on top of us!” someone shouted. “He’s on the roof!”

The van swerved some more, hydroplaning here and there in the streets as the driver tried maneuvers to shake him off.

The bat moved towards the front of the van, knowing full-well that bullets were about to be fired up through the roof. He wasn’t wrong. As soon as he made it to just above the driver’s side, bullets peppered the roof at the rear of the van. Suddenly, the driver got the great idea to slam on the breaks. Batman had known this was coming. It was the only thing left for them to do. The van had only been able to pick up to speeds around fifteen miles an hour after it had nearly spun out. As soon as he slid off the roof, he activated the electrical current in his cape, the SMPs forming the perfect hang gliding shape as he soared down the street. Behind him, the van, having stopped so suddenly in a wet street, hydroplaned and then swerved a bit out of control, ending up perpendicular to the street.

He brought his feet under him, creating traction on the pavement as he came in for a not-so-smooth landing. As soon as he had dropped to the point where his knees could make contact with the ground, Batman deactivated the SMPs, and the cape returned instantly to its usual limp cloth state. He ducked his head, relaxed his body, rolled over one shoulder, and skidded to a halt feet first in an uke, or a jiu-jitsu breakfall position, just the way motorcycle stunt riders were taught to do in an accident.

Some of the force of the impact had been taken out of the impact because the advanced STL system, or shear-thickening liquid, which had its own thin layer within his suit. It was the same tech that had stopped the bullet that hit his shoulder from penetrating. The STLs created at the labs of Wayne Enterprises were lightweight liquids until they came into contact with impactors, such as a bullet or shrapnel, where the impacts forced the liquids to harden and resist the projectiles. These STLs could also provide assistance in dispersing some of the energy from impacting on the ground.

When he leapt back up to his feet, the Batman was just in time to see the van back up around a corner, doing a not-so-smooth J-turn. He reached down to his hip holster to grab the GTEM gun and fire another shot…and found that it wasn’t there. That’s when he remembered he hadn’t re-holstered it. He hadn’t had time to retract the grappling hook from the back door of the van, so soon had trouble started. That meant that the gun was still attached to the van’s back door.

As he stood and watched the van round the corner and pass out of sight, the Dark Knight sighed. He supposed it hadn’t been a total loss. He had a name now—somebody in the van had called somebody else Hughes—and he had all of their faces recorded on his onboard computer, as well as their voices, and license plates (although those would probably be changed before the night was out, if experience had taught him anything).

Yes, the bat had some things to work with, and he had two more GTEM guns back at the cave. Still, losing such a great piece of tech was disheartening. Once the criminals got a hold of it, they would know what he was working with. And who knows, One of those criminals he’d just lost might end up using the gun for ill intent someday, the way dead police officer’s guns ended up in the hands of murderers. It wasn’t good losing equipment like that, because it all fed back into the process of escalation, something he was trying to reverse.

Batman looked up the street at the dumpster that had been destroyed in the fight, and wondered if he wasn’t getting a little too reckless. He’d seen an opportunity to gain a lead into the Juarez cartels and insight into Mulcoyisy Stewart-Paulson’s operations. As a powerful consigliere of the Falcone crime family, Stewart-Paulson was of great interest to Batman, Gordon, and the GCPD. The man was careful not to appear anywhere in public, and he’d been as evasive as the Batman himself, it seemed.

The frustration of finding no leads was getting to him. What if there had been pedestrians on this side of town while this chase had gone down? Sure, it was the Bowery, and people were scarce in this area, especially on a night like tonight, but if there had been anyone out, and they had gotten hit and killed by the van, Batman would be blaming himself this very instant.

And he would be right to do so.

He thought about his situation as he moved into the nearest comforting shadow. He still had the fat man passed out behind the oil drums—that is, if someone hadn’t gotten to him yet. And there was also the machine pistol that he’d wrenched free of his attacker. Batman went back to where that part of the fight had happened, and searched around for nearly ten minutes before he found the M1912 at the side of the road, difficult to see because it was halfway in a puddle. With any luck, he’d be able to extract fingerprints from portions of it.

* * *

THE FAT MAN woke up upside down. “Whu…?”

There must have been a moment of great disorientation, and for many reasons. The drug that the Batman had given him was pretty powerful. It could even make a person suffer some memory loss over the last few hours before they were hit with it, though that wasn’t common. Still, the details of the last little bit before he got taken down would at least be fuzzy to him.

His arms reached out, trying to swim. But he wasn’t underwater, and he figured that out pretty quick as his vision must have cleared and he saw the buildings across from him, and the streets below him—or what must have seemed above him momentarily. A low whimper started in his throat, and then hyperventilation. “Hunnnnn…whu…nnnnn…?”

“Calm down,” the bat whispered from just beside his left ear. “You’re safe. For now,” he added. “What’s your name?”

But the fat man still whimpered. He was hanging from a crane left out at a construction site just one block out of what was officially Bowery territory, and a long chain the Batman had found in the area was keeping the big man up. He’d activated the crane long enough to lift the big guy in the air, and then climbed up to the top to join him, waking him up with another injection. The site was meant to be a new hospital to take the weight off of the other clinics in the area in the wake of the destruction of Gotham Central. Right now, the whole site was as quiet as a cemetery.

“What…wh-what are you…lemme down, homes! Lemme d—!”

“In a moment,” he said, wincing against the pain in his left shoulder; despite the STL system, he thought the bullet still might have cracked something. “As long as you answer some of my questions.”

“No sé… Yo no sé nada…I don’t…I don’t know nuthin’, homes, I swear!” He waved at the air, and looked down, or what was up for him, and freaked when he saw the empty street below him. He flailed at the air some more, and ended up spinning around, looking at the bat dead in the eye. “Oh, god! It’s you!” The mask, the antennas, the look of him, it was all too familiar to the vermin. Many times he had thought about ditching the getup in favor of something plain, but by now he had the power of his reputation. Reputation brought certain gravity, and made certain folks pay attention who otherwise wouldn’t. “Hey, homes! I didn’t do nuthin’! Bowery’s yers, we all know that! I wasn’t doin’ nuthin’ in there that would hurt—”

“You were meeting with Nate’s people, weren’t you?”

“What…Nate? Nate who?”

“Mulcoyisy Stewart-Paulson. His friends call him by his middle name, Nate. Those were his people. I’d like you to introduce me to him, or to some more of his friends.”

“Man, I don’t know no Nate! Oh, god, homes! Lemme down!”

“I found these in your pocket,” said the bat, holding out two bottles that rattled. They were filled with sumatriptan and odansetron pills. “You suffer from migraines? This is some pretty serious medication. You must get them bad. This can’t be good for you right now, hanging upside down like this, all the blood going to your head. The stress alone must be rough on your heart.” He held out another bottle, this one filled with diltiazem pills. “Which are what these are for, right? A big guy like you, with all these health problems, and some serious weight issues, you need to start talking before things get really bad for you. Bats hang upside down, not overweight street thugs like you.”

“I don’t know no Nate, man!” he shouted. “Help! Somebody! Heeeellllllpppp!”

“Nobody’s around. Nobody that matters, anyway. The people who live around this place hear cries for help all the time. They get used to them, to the point that they don’t bother interfering anymore. It’s safer for them that way, that’s why you and Nate’s people came down this way, didn’t you? Nobody to interfere with business discussions?”

“Piss off, bat! Lemme down from here!”

The bat reached out, snatched the fat fellow by his short afro, and jerked his head around. Once they were eye-to-eye, he head-butted the fat man, smashing his nose. The fat man let out a yelp, and then Batman gave him a great push, which sent him swinging back and forth. The chains were tied around him well, but still, the fat man would be seeing the world swaying back and forth from his end, seeing the deadly drop that waited for him should the chains fail, and his screams became high pitched and desperate.

“Okay! Okayyyyyyyyyyyyy! Stop! Just stop! No quiero a morir! Bring me back in! Por favor! Oh, God!”

When the fat man swung by him, Batman reached out and snatched him by his afro again, and jerked at it to pull the big man in closer. “Nate,” he said.

“Nate’s…Nate’s a ghost, homes! Nobody sees him! I’ve never met the man! Don’t want to, either!”

“Then who were those men you met? His, right?”

“I…I think so…maybe, I dunno…they said they were, at least…” Blood was now running down the fat man’s face, and the face was getting incredibly red from the blood rushing to his head. He was starting to hyperventilate more. “Help me out, homes! Get me down from here, an’ I won’t never come back to the Bowery again, I swear to God, amigo!”

“Let’s start back over. What’s your name?”

“What…E-Enrique!”

“Enrique what?”

“Enrique…G-Gutierrez…”

“Well, Enrique Gutierrez,” he said, letting go of his afro and letting the fat man swing freely again, though not as much as before. “You and some of your friends represent the interests of the Juarez cartel here in Gotham. Don’t try to deny it, I already know about it and lying only makes me angry.”

“Oh…oh, God… sí…I mean, yes…yes, we work for Carlos…”

“You’re a captain in his organization, then?”

“Y-yes…”

“And what did he send you to talk about with the Falcones?”

There was some hesitation in the fat man, but eventually he glanced back at the street below, and swallowed hard considering the alternative if he didn’t cooperate. “We…we helped bring the stuff across the border for them…”

“By ‘stuff’, I assume you mean drugs.”

“Sí…th-they needed help with gettin’ their things into the city through new routes. Some o’ C-Carlos’s people made contact w-with Nate’s people from the old country—”

“Italy.”

“Sí…an’ they gave Nate permission to make arrangements…for w-w-working with us an’ the Shukurs…”

Inside the Batman’s mask, he raised an eyebrow. That’s interesting. The Shukurs are Middle Eastern, he thought. And very professional. One of the big names that had come and gone over a year ago had been a couple of “feelers” for the Shukur cartel, which had come all the way from places around what they called the “Golden Triangle” and the “Golden Crescent”, the principal areas of illicit opium production in the world. The Shukurs came from Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, emerging at the nadir of the European illicit drug trade, and had spread slowly across the U.S., taking hold in various cities, only it seemed they had ultimately decided to pass on Gotham City.

Until now, it seems.

“Carlos Juarez is trying to work out a partnership with both the Falcone and Shukur organizations?” Batman clarified.

“Y-yes…”

“What are the specifics?”

There was less hesitation from the fat man now. He seemed to realize that they were going to be up here all night, or at least as long as the bat needed to. There were still a few hours before sunrise. He would be starting to wonder if he could survive that long, the bat wagered. “The Shukurs p-provide their goods…w-we supply the route into the States an’ into Gotham, g-give the Falcones a new vein…an’ the Falcones sell it. The Shukurs hide the stuff…b-but I dunno where, homes! I swear!”

Batman nodded. Simple enough. “Very good, Enrique. Now, I just have a couple more questions.” The fat man glanced at him. So far, Enrique had somehow managed to keep his gold chains from falling off of his neck—they had gotten caught in folds of his chin. “You were haggling over the price paid for some kind of job with Nate’s people. What service did you do for them?”

“I…I…”

“Come on, Enrique. You’ve been doing so well.” He glanced up at the sky. “Morning’s still far off, and nobody’s coming here until at least sunup.”

Enrique licked his lips. “He p-paid us…”

“Who did?”

The guy I was talkin’ to, homes…h-he always tol’ me to call ’im John, but I’m pretty sure that’s not his name, ya feel me?”

Yes,” said the bat. “Back to this job. What did ‘John’ want you to do for them?” Enrique’s eyes started wandering. He was back to hesitating. That means it’s something bad. “Did you kill somebody?”

“What? No, homes, no…”

But the bat had seen which way his eyes had moved. It was in the direction of his eyes, which indicated he was accessing the creative centers of his brain, searching for an alibi or a way out of this line of discussion. The first thing he’d learned when he’d become serious about being an investigator was to search for microexpressions, those brief displays of emotion that revealed what the person was really feeling and thinking. Microexpressions were best studied by psychologist Paul Ekman, and had proved that, though hard to catch due to their fleeting nature, a person with enough free time on their hands could study videos of liars and make very accurate predictions about what was true and what was false.

Bruce Wayne had made plenty of free time for this study.

“Who did you kill, Enrique?” he asked.

“Nobody, man!”

“Enrique?”

“What? I tol’ you, I don’t kill, fool!”

“Who did you kill, Enrique?”

“I didn’t kill nobody, man! Ain’t you listenin’, pendejo?”

“Who did you kill, Enrique?”

“I didn’t kill NOBODY, man!”

“Enrique?” The Batman leaned in, slowly at first. He made eye contact. The fat man looked at him, his face getter redder from so much time spent upside down, his nose swelling up where it had been shattered. His eyes darted here and there, but he wouldn’t meet the bat’s gaze. “Enrique?” he said again. Finally, the fat man’s eyes landed on Batman’s, and it seemed he couldn’t tear them away. “Look at me, you piece of trash,” he said. The fat man’s breathing steadied a bit, and he gazed at his captor as though hypnotized. “Who did you kill?” he said in a whisper so low that it sounded like a threat even to him. At times like these, he wasn’t sure himself when or if he would go too far.

The Batman glanced down on purpose, suggesting the fall that awaited Enrique.

Enrique blinked, as though lifted from a spell. He swallowed, and looked at the street, up at the pavement ceiling that would break his neck and his spine like they were twigs. He swallowed hard again, and looked back at the bat. “I didn’t…I didn’t p-pull the trigger myself, homes…an’ I didn’t know there was gonna be no kid there, I swear to ya I didn’t…”

The bat whispered, “Who, Enrique?”

“H-her name was Margot Tralley, an’ sh-she was supposed to die alone. J-just her, n-n-not her daughter.”