Bonnie hunkered down beside Selina. She muttered something about bad translations, then sat back on her heels. "It's just a guess, but I don't think either the Russians or the Moldovans care about this Stepan. He wasn't supposed to be here. It says he didn't have a visa, but it doesn't say he's a criminal. Both sides are interested in his corpse. Like there was something special about it..." Her eyes grew wide. "Radioactive! He's some poor soul from Chernobyl... Wait---Chernobyl's in the Ukraine. Where's Moldova? Where's my atlas---?" She crawled toward her stacks of books.
Selina grabbed her ankle. "Forget that. Suppose it was a box, about this big..." She made a frame with her fingers. "Maybe covered with old velvet. What could it be?" She remembered the object that had been thrown into the vehicle before it sped away.
A question had been asked, and Bonnie strove to answer it. She didn't consider any related questions, such as why Selina mentioned a box or why Selina was so interested in a handful of foreigners. Bonnie simply tried to answer the question that had been asked. She didn't have a photographic memory, but she did have a pretty good one, especially for things that others called trivia.
"Lacquer," she said after a moment.
Selina arched one eyebrow.
"Shiny lacquer boxes with bright-colored pictures," Bonnie elaborated. "I ask myself a question and I see an answer. Now I see a shiny box with a picture of a fairy tale on it. Somewhere I must've learned about lacquer boxes coming from Russia being valuable." She shrugged helplessly, as if the process was as mysterious to her as it was to Selina.
For her part, Selina looked down at the flawless crossword puzzle. She was on the verge of a concussion when Bonnie snatched the newspaper away.
"Oo---wait. Not lacquer." She thrashed through the paper, making a mess, which, at least, was something Selina could identify with. "Icons. Icons---here. Look." She tapped her finger on a grainy photograph.
Bruce Wayne, the caption read, of the Wayne Foundation, had loaned the art museum a rare and priceless seventeenth-century icon. Mr. Wayne said he'd found the luminous portrait of St. Olga in one of his grandfather's travel trunks during a routine cleaning of his mansion's attics.
"Liar," Selina muttered on impulse, then noticed the searching stare on Bonnie's face. "He's just fronting for the police," she said quickly, not wanting to remain under the other woman's scrutiny. "You haven't lived in Gotham long enough, but the Wayne Foundation's always suckin' up to the city."
"Wow. I was going to go and see it. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe it's too dangerous. But there aren't many examples of good seventeenth-century Russian iconography in the West. I really should go; it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
"Once in a lifetime," Selina said dryly. "You'd risk your life to see this picture. You must really like these things."
"No, I've never seen one, but this might be my only chance, ever. Who knows, someday I might need to have seen one, and I'll remember that I had the chance but didn't take it. There'll be guards there. It's probably no more dangerous than taking the subway."
"Do you take the subway?"
"Well, no---but I will, at least once while I'm living here. Don't you want to try to do everything and see everything that you can?"
Selina chose not to answer. "I'll go with you to see this icon," she said instead. "What about tomorrow?"
"I've got to work. Maybe after work. How late is the museum open? What does the paper say?"
"Ditch the Warriors for a day."
Bonnie's lips formed a silent O of surprise. "I can't do that. It's my job. They count on me. I open the door. I answer the phone, open the---"
"Just once." Selina grinned. She had Bonnie cold this time. "Ditch the Warriors, for the experience of it."
"You're right. Of course you're right. It won't be too dangerous. There'll be guards there to keep the icon safe. They'll keep the people safe, too; why else put it on display in the museum? Right? Bruce Wayne---or somebody else---wants people to come look at it, right?"
Right, indeed, Selina said to herself.
There were guards posted at the doors of the hastily rearranged gallery, and several mingling through the steady stream of visitors. All but one of the guards were longtime employees of the museum; the odd man, at Bruce Wayne's insistence, was an employee of the Wayne Foundation. He was, in fact, Bruce Wayne himself with a frosting of gray in his hair, cheek pads and nose pads, and bits of latex here and there to give him the unmistakable air of an unhappily retired city cop.
Ceiling-mounted cameras were taping everything, but Batman wanted to mingle with the crowd. He trusted his own ability to separate the sheep from the goats, if the sheep or the sheepherders should happen to wander through. He'd certainly recognize Tiger, whom he expected would put in an appearance. He hoped he might be able to pick Catwoman's mundane face out of the crowd as well, but he could have done all that from a comfortable chair in the security control room.
No, the reason Bruce Wayne circled endlessly around the glistened icon was that he expected one of the interested parties to approach him with a conspiracy. And the reason he expected this to happen was that he'd submerged himself completely in the criminal mind. Walking his lazy circles, he radiated boredom, corruption, greed, and other twisted virtues of the demimonde. No one asked him about the object on display or the way to the nearest rest room. Honest folk distrusted the aura he projected. In the few hours since the gallery opened, he'd been plied four times with hypothetical questions about the security setup. The third time it had been a couple. The woman hadn't said anything, but she was the right size for the black cat suit. He'd remember if he saw her again.
The Gagauzi made their appearance at midday, a close-knit quartet that never shuffled forward to get a good look at the icon. They gestured at the cameras, the velvet ropes, and the icon itself, arguing loudly in their incomprehensible language. Complaints were made. Bruce joined two of the museum guards in escorting the foreigners out of the building. He hovered nearby, asking if there wasn't something he could do to help, broadcasting his assumed criminality. They were nervous and suspicious. Their cultural signals were at odds with Gotham City. No one was going to get close to them, including Batman.
Wayne fingered the two-way radio slung on his belt. The device was considerably more complex than ones his erstwhile fellow guards carried. He could have placed a call directly to Commissioner Gordon. At the very least, the Gagauzi were in the country without visas. Rounding them up would leave the arms deal dead in the water. And it would leave a lot of ends dangling. Batman grit his teeth and returned to the gallery.
Two women came in. His mental alarms went wild. The pair were young and animated, mismatched in clothing and manner, but this was Gotham City, and there were no rules. Either one could have been the body inside the black catsuit. He couldn't get close to them without drawing attention to himself. One of them, at least, was aware of him. Considering the Catwoman's independence, Batman took this as a positive sign that was reinforced when they settled down on benches in a less-crowded adjoining gallery, out of camera range. Batman kept an eye on them for a couple hours; then they were gone and he could only wonder if he'd missed an opportunity.
The man he most expected and wanted to see didn't show up until a half hour before closing time. Tiger elbowed his way to the velvet ropes. He stretched and leaned as far forward as balance allowed. Another guard got to him first and told him to contain his curiosity. Bruce Wayne intercepted him moments later. Tiger glared ferociously at the sight of a uniform, any uniform, crowding him.
"Some guys got all the luck," Bruce Wayne said by way of an introduction. His voice was as subtly and completely altered as his appearance. There was no likelihood that Tiger would connect him with Batman.
"Not me," Tiger replied, hesitating but not retreating.
"And to think that he found this in the attic." Bruce paused long enough for confident disbelief to register on Tiger's face. "Makes you wonder, though," he continued, "what else this Bruce W
ayne fellow's got in his attic. If you know what I mean."
Tiger's face was transformed. The suspicion was replaced by slit-eyed thoughtfulness. He studied the guard, and he thought about the idea the guard had put into his head. "Yeah," he said slowly. "It does." Not that he believed for one moment that the icon had come out of Bruce Wayne's attic, but the museum had taken the bait easily enough. A wealth of possibilities unfolded in Tiger's mind, and were covered over again. He had other things to do right now.
Like getting that icon out of the museum and using it to get back in the Connection's good graces. Burglary wasn't his strong suit. The icon appeared to be sitting on top of a cheap fiberboard pillar inside a flimsy acrylic box. He couldn't see any security except for these middle-aged rent-a-cops. He knew he had to be wrong. He'd been wrong about the icon from the get-go. He'd never guessed the dark, morbid picture the Russian showed him wasn't the picture the Connection was buying. He thought the new, revealed picture was just as ugly and overpriced, but he could see the gold and the jewels and he knew he couldn't afford to make another mistake.
"You guys for real," he said to the guard still standing beside him, "or are you just for show 'cause the real security's somewhere else?"
"We're real," Bruce Wayne replied honestly enough. "They don't turn the gadgets on until the gallery closes, or you'd have tripped every alarm leaning over the ropes like that."
"They got a foolproof system, huh?"
"No system's foolproof---" Bruce said significantly, then he smiled. "Say, what's your name, anyway? I like you."
Tiger returned the smile. He liked the guard, too. He had a gut-level sense of compatibility and a confidence that they could do business together. Tiger didn't usually feel empathy toward strangers. He felt a heartbeat of doubt, which he shunted aside. The tigers were testing him. It was time to follow his hunches. "Just call me The Tiger. You wouldn't be thinking that maybe you could tell me some more about how it ain't foolproof? I could make it very much worth your while." The guard hesitated; that was good, Tiger thought, the guy shouldn't be too eager. "I'm looking at a lot of business comin' my way soon. I could use someone like you who knows about security and shit."
Bruce Wayne made himself look and feel nervous. He glanced around like a man with something to hide. "Not here," he whispered. "I gotta think about it, Tiger. Maybe later."
"Opportunity like this doesn't wait 'til later. You want in now, I let you in now. I don't want guys who gotta think."
"Then I'm in. I'm your man," Batman said with no further hesitation.
Chapter Sixteen
Bruce Wayne retreated to the guard's locker room in the basement of the museum. He made certain no one was watching, then used the customized radio to tell Alfred that the bait had been taken and he was going incommunicado. Alfred would handle everything for Bruce Wayne and Batman, even take care of Commissioner Gordon if the Batsignal went up. He would also be alert for any other, less conventional message Batman might need to send.
Then Bruce Wayne put on an ordinary shirt and trousers, loaded his pockets with the very best in fake ID, checked his appearance-altering makeup, and strolled onto the museum loading-dock to meet his new partner.
Tiger led him downtown to a sour-smelling bar where the light came from the neon signs proclaiming the varieties of beer on tap. Most of the patrons were crowded around the bar watching the basketball playoffs. The home team was winning by a wide margin, and this was a home-team bar. No one noticed a stranger when Tiger called for two beers at his favorite table in the back.
Sinking deep into his adopted persona, Bruce Wayne didn't blink at what he half saw and overheard. He was one of these lowlifes for a while; their world was his world, their rules, his rules. Batman did not exist, except as an enemy. Slouching in a bentwood chair with uneven legs, cradling a stein of cheap beer between his hands, a reconstructed Bruce was in his element and completely at ease.
They spent a beer or two exchanging bona fides. Or, rather, Tiger drank while his new friend talked. After pounding his chest with his fist and making veiled allusions to killjoy doctors and infernal pills, Bruce ignored the alcohol in front of him. Bruce made up his criminal history on the fly, snatching bits and pieces from Batman's memory. Tiger was duly impressed. But then, Tiger was a criminal and criminals were among the most impressionable people on the face of the planet. Each and every one thought he was the smartest goon in the room, the guy who knew all the angles, the guy for whom the rules did not apply. Criminals were also gullible. Every time Bruce Wayne flattered his companion's ego, Tiger became more deeply convinced that he'd found a henchman he could trust.
Gradually, as the night wore on and the beer continued to flow, Wayne was able to take control of the conversation. He traded information about the improvised security surrounding the icon for information about the Connection. But although Tiger readily admitted that he'd done considerable work for the mysterious middleman, it became clear to Bruce Wayne that Tiger merely did what he was told and had no notion of the Connection's long-term plans. In his mind he'd never believed anything different, but in his heart he'd allowed a brief flicker of hope.
Tiger drank heavily. Bruce listened attentively to everything Tiger had to say; there was always a chance that something truly useful would slip in. And Tiger, thinking he'd finally found an audience that understood and appreciated his talents, began to speak recklessly of destiny and transformation.
"Today's your lucky day," he said, shaking his finger at Batman. "You're gonna thank your lucky stars that you was standing beside that icon when I came in. You're gonna be a rich man. Important. You just wait and see. You're gonna say: thank you, Tiger."
"I already have," Bruce said admiringly. "You've got connections."
"Yeah. Yeah I have." Tiger sat up straighter. He looked at his watch and drained his stein. "Okay. We gotta go now. We gotta meet someone. You let me do all the talking, understand? Once I got you in, then you can talk, but you don't know the boss, so you don't do nothing when we see him, okay? You still got that napkin you drew on?"
Bruce shook his head. He'd destroyed the crude diagram he'd made of the icon security. Force of habit, he explained with a shrug. Tiger became agitated, demanding that he make another diagram quickly.
"It's your bona fides. The boss sees you know what you're talkin' about and that you can get him that friggin' icon, he takes you into the organization."
"Are we going to see the boss?" Bruce paused with the diagram half-drawn.
"Yeah. Sort of."
Batman completed the diagram with care and accuracy. He had to assume that the Connection was smarter than his lieutenants. He had to assume that a man who'd survived outside the law for a half-century could spot a ringer. At the moment the icon belonged to no one. If it had to be given up like a pawn in a chess game to get Batman into the Connection's organization, that was something Bruce Wayne could live with. Folding the napkin in neat quarters, he tucked it in his wallet and followed Tiger out of the bar.
They walked several avenue blocks side by side. Bruce began to wonder if the Connection had written Tiger off. The possibility had to be considered. The Gagauzi debacle in front of 208 Broad Street was enough to cashier a lieutenant in any man's army, but, even more, Tiger's constant talk about fate and transformation marked him as a man about to walk off the edge. Then Bruce saw an antenna-sprouting package-service van turn out of a side street onto the avenue ahead of them. It cruised to the curb and waited with its lights on and its engine idling. No one got out; no one got on. Through the layers of latex and disguise, Batman's senses came alive with anticipation.
Tiger spoke rapidly with the driver, who made brief eye contact with Bruce Wayne before releasing the brakes. Bruce stayed on the bottom step with the wind and pavement at his back, watching every move the driver made after Tiger withdrew into the back of the van. He didn't try to make conversation or co-conspiratorial alliances. From what he'd already seen, the Connection ran his organization
on a need-to-know basis, and the driver didn't need to know anything about the stranger braced in the open doorway as he got the van up to speed.
Nothing could have prepared Bruce Wayne for the jolts and noise that struck the vehicle without warning. He needed both hands to keep himself from falling backward onto the pavement; there was no way to protect his ears from the assault. The torture subsided to a bearable shake and whine in less than a minute. Batman shook his head to clear it and caught a glimpse of the driver smiling smugly beneath his bright yellow protective ear muffs. He returned a toothy grin and hauled himself up the steps just in time for the partition door between the driver's cab and the cargo area to slide open.
"You can come in now," Tiger said.
The petty crook Bruce pretended to be was overwhelmed by the illusion surrounding him. He stood stock-still with his mouth gaping open while the real Bruce Wayne analyzed everything and committed it to memory. One technological wizard to another, he could admire the Connection's obvious genius. He couldn't see the cameras and sensors, of course; he saw the same holographic illusion Tiger did, but Batman was, perhaps, the only other person who could truly appreciate the genius that created it. Gradually, when he'd inferred all that he dared from the illusion, Bruce Wayne allowed the petty crook to take a hesitant step toward Tiger and the faintly glowing holograph.
"What is this?" Bruce Wayne asked with an awestruck voice. He jabbed at the nearest apparent surface. His hand disappeared, as he expected. He pretended to panic and managed to fall through the illusion, gaining a quick look at some of the transceiving equipment before reinserting himself into the holograph. He did a credible imitation of a man whose worst nightmares had come true.
"Call it a rite of passage," the holograph said smoothly.
Bruce Wayne got up from his knees. No wonder the descriptions never tallied. A man who could create one perfect holograph could transform himself a thousand times over. On the other hand, the man who created this illusion was pumping a powerful signal into this van. It was undoubtedly disguised and encrypted, but it had to be real and it had to be detectable.
Catwoman - Tiger Hunt Page 15
