The Joker stared at me, his eyes twinkling as I took my place on the far side of the table.
“I’ve decided to accept you as my physician for this stay, Doctor Lewis.”
“Be still, my heart.”
“I was getting tired of Doctor Hills, anyway. Such an egotist—an I-sore. Always letting off esteem. Get it?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“But seriously, folks, if I am to cooperate in therapy, we must have privacy.” He glanced at the two guards who flanked him. “I can’t have a couple of screws eavesdropping on the intimate details of my life.”
He had a point, of course. But I wasn’t about to take any chances. I had the guards manacle his wrists and ankles to the arms and legs of his chair, then had them wait outside the closed door.
“Your credentials are impressive,” the Joker said when we were alone.
Concern began to nibble at the back of my neck.
“You know nothing of my credentials.”
“Au contraire, Doctor Lewis. I have a complete dossier on you.”
He then proceeded to recite my curriculum vitae, ticking off one by one the schools I’d attended, the awards I’d received, my class rank in medical school, my appointment as chief resident on Downstate’s psychiatric service, even my starting salary here at Arkham.
“That’s an insult,” he said, shaking his head in disdain at the last item. “You’re worth far more than that.”
I knew my jaw was hanging open and slack.
“Where did you—?”
My expression must have been hilarious, for the Joker burst out laughing.
“I told you—I’m the Joker, the Clown Prince of Crime! Nothing goes on in this city without my knowledge.”
Persistent grandiose delusions. But how did he . . . ?
I shook off my shock and forced myself to focus on the matter at hand. Namely, interviewing my patient. He was uncooperative, giving nonsense answers to my questions about his childhood, and purposely bizarre responses to the Rorschach blots I showed him.
I tried probing his past history again.
“Ever been in love, Joker?”
“Always. I’m girl crazy—girls won’t go out with me, and it makes me crazy! Get it?”
I pressed on: “Ever been married?”
“Doctor Jekyll, I believe you’re getting under my hide.”
“Answer the question, please.”
“Married? Me? No. I prefer to stay single and unaltared. Get it?”
For the second time, amid wild laughter, I terminated the session early.
CONFERENCE
Later that day I had a clinical conference with Dr. Hills, the chief of psychiatry at Arkham. We discussed my two disturbing encounters with the Joker.
“Be extremely wary, Hal,” Dr. Hills told me. “He’s a diabolical creature.”
I’d never heard Dr. Hills talk like this. It was so unclinical, so . . . unscientific.
“I know he’s an incorrigible, but—”
“He’s worse than that. He’s a master manipulator. He makes it extremely difficult, almost impossible, to stay in command of your therapy session. He turns everything around on you. If you’re not careful, he’ll reverse the therapy process. Instead of you treating him. he will be influencing you, making you question yourself, your values, everything you believe in . . .” Dr. Hills’s voice trailed off and a far-away look seeped into his eyes. “Everything.”
I didn’t know about that. What I did know was that he would not be manipulating me—although he had managed to unsettle me. That would not happen again.
“What I would like to know,” I said, “is how he manages to have such easy access to outside sources from which he should be completely cut off.”
“I know, I know. We don’t know how he does it. But don’t let that distract you. Stay on course. This is your trial by fire for Arkham Asylum. If you can weather the Joker, you can handle anything.”
“You make him sound like the devil himself.”
Dr. Hills looked away.
“Sometimes I wonder . . .”
SESSION FIVE
I tried to hide my agitation as the session began, tried to pretend that nothing untoward had happened. The Joker, for his part, was less cooperative than usual. Despite the fact that we were alone, he said not a word. Just sat there staring at me. Grinning.
Finally, I turned off the tape recorder, ready to terminate the session.
Then he spoke.
“Don’t you like your new car?”
I bit down on the insides of my cheeks to keep from shouting out my anger. I couldn’t let him see how shaken I was, how he’d gotten to me.
It had happened that morning. I’d been running late and so it was especially frustrating when I couldn’t find my car in the Gotham Gardens parking lot. At first I’d thought I’d simply forgotten where I’d parked it, for there was a Mercedes in the spot I usually used. Soon it became clear that my car was gone. But who would steal that old junker?
Agitated now, I walked over to my usual spot and checked out the Mercedes. It was new. A brand-new 560 SEL. Royal blue. My favorite color. I thought about how I was going to own one of those someday and I wondered which tenant in a low-rent apartment complex like Gotham Gardens could afford such a beast.
Then I saw the keys in the door lock.
I peered through the driver’s window. There was an envelope on the front seat. With my name on it. I yanked open the car door and tore open the envelope. Inside was the registration card—in my name—and a sheet of purple stationery.
For the exclusive use
of Dr. Harold Lewis.
A playing card was attached. A Joker.
“Well?” the Joker said now from the other side of the table. “Aren’t you even going to say thank you?”
No. I wasn’t going to say thank you.
“How’d it drive?”
I’d been running late already and had no choice but to drive the Mercedes to work. How’d it drive? Like piloting a cloud. But I’d been too angry, too unsettled by this arrogant intrusion into my life to enjoy it.
I steadied myself. Finally, I felt able to speak calmly.
“Where is my old car?”
“Gone. Dead. Kaput. Junked. Pounded into a neat little cube of twisted steel and sent back to the melting pot from which it came.”
“Listen, pal,” I said, “if you think such a blatant attempt at bribery will get you special treatment from me, or turn me into some sort of clandestine ally, you’re sadly mistaken. I’m not for sale.”
Not ever. I thought. Especially not to the murderer of Colin Whittier.
“Of course you’re not. Do you really think I d be so clumsy as to try to bribe you with a car? A car? Good gracious me, no. It’s just that I simply couldn’t bear to know that my personal physician was driving around in public in that 1982 Toyota. A Celica, no less! I’ve got a reputation to uphold. How do you think it looks to my organization when they see their leader’s doctor driving a Jap junker? It was an intolerable situation that required an immediate remedy.”
“I won’t stand for it!”
“I’m afraid you have no choice, Doctor Lewis. The deed is done. Your old car is no more. You might as well use the new one. Why not enjoy it? Your conscience is clear, your ethics are unsullied. I ask nothing in return, only that you drive it. My image, you see.”
“Guards,” I called. I wasn’t about to listen to any more of this.
“Dina will love it, too.”
Dina? What did he know about Dina?
Weak and numb, I watched the guards unlock his restraints and lead him out.
SESSION EIGHT
The session was going particularly well. The Joker was opening up about his troubled, turbulent childhood. I still had no insight as yet into the mechanisms of his behavior, but we were just getting started in therapy. The important thing was that I felt that we were beginning to make progress toward a viable physician-patient relatio
nship. Then he started with the crummy one-liners again.
“You know, Doctor Lewis, I was the kind of student who made my teachers stay after school. Get it? I was an honor student—I was saying either ‘Yes, your Honor,’ or ‘No, your Honor.’ Get it? When I was a kid I was so tough, I got thrown out of every reform school in the country.”
“Can we try to be serious? Just for a moment?”
“Don’t worry, Doc. I know you’re trying. In fact, you’re very trying. Get it?”
That did it. I made a final note prior to ending the session. But when I looked up, I saw that his hands were free. He was holding out a deck of playing cards.
“Pick a card,” he said. “Any card.”
Terror jolted through me. I shouted for the guards. By the time they reached us, the Joker’s hands were back in the manacles. The deck of cards remained between us on the table.
“Never mind,” I told the guards. After all, he hadn’t tried to harm me. Maybe this was an opportunity to gain his confidence, which might put us on the quickest road to meaningful therapy. “False alarm.”
As they returned to their posts outside the door, the Joker looked at me curiously. I picked up the deck and shuffled through it. All Jokers.
“How do you get these things smuggled in?”
“I’ve told you: I’m the—”
“ ‘Clown Prince of Crime.’ I know. A regular modern-day Mabuse.”
“Ah. The doctor is a movie buff. Yes, I suppose I could be compared to Doctor Mabuse on a superficial level, but I am his superior in every way. Doctor Mabuse was a piker compared to the Joker.”
More grandiosity. It was wearying.
“But you’re real,” I said. “Mabuse was fiction. He didn’t have to worry about running up against Batman.”
I knew immediately that I’d struck a nerve. Something changed in the Joker’s eyes and demeanor. The airy, bon-vivant pose vanished. I felt a chill worm across my shoulders as cold hatred flashed from his eyes and hung like rank smog in the air between us. And then as suddenly as it had come, it was gone. Blown away by a gust of laughter.
“Batman! Talk about crazies! They put me in here while they let him run around loose in his cape and tights.”
“They could have put you in the electric chair for murdering Colin Whittier,” I said softly. I’d almost said should instead of could. I’d have to be careful.
“But they can’t!” he said with another laugh. “Because I’ve been classified as insane! I’m not responsible. Isn’t that wonderful? Oh, it’s so good to be mad in America. I can do unto others, but they can’t do unto me!”
As he giggled on, I said, “Don’t you feel any remorse for the hurt you’ve caused people? For the artistic riches you’ve robbed from society by killing Colin Whittier?”
“Society? What has society ever done for me?”
“Well, you might have a point there, but you’ve caused untold harm in your lifetime—the deaths, the grief, the pain. Don’t you feel any impulse to make reparation?”
“Not the slightest. I put the Joker first. If I don’t, who will? I. Me. Moi. Society, the public good, the little man, they can take my leavings. And I’d prefer you not mention Batman in my presence again.”
Remembering how quickly he’d gotten in and out of his manacles a moment ago, I nodded.
“And by the way,” he said, “how does the lovely Dina like the new car?”
I was suddenly boiling on the inside, but I remained cool without.
“Just as you do not wish Batman mentioned, I do not wish anyone from my personal life mentioned.”
“She’s very attractive.”
“I hope you’re not thinking of threatening her.”
“Threaten?” He laughed. “That sort of thing is for gunsels and dime-a-dozen desperadoes. Fratellezza swine. I like you, Doctor Lewis. I have no interest in threatening anyone dear to you. Besides, why should I? What can you do for me?
“You might think I can help you escape.”
Another laugh. “I can escape any time I wish.”
“Really? Then, why are you still imprisoned here?”
“Because for the time being it amuses me,” he said without missing a beat. “Just as I can smuggle in anything I wish, I can leave anytime I wish. And when I decide that it’s time to take my leave, I shall escape with elan, dear doctor. Without your help. No crude, petty jailbreak for the Joker. The Joker will not sneak out, nor will he crawl or tunnel out. He’ll either fly or walk—at the time of his own choosing.”
“We’ll see.”
“Yes. We will. And when are you going to ask that woman to marry you?”
“None of your business!”
“Ah! Business! I wish we were in business! Building and loan—I wish you’d get out of the building and leave me alone. Get it?”
“Good day, Joker,” I said, rising.
“Good day, Doctor Lewis.”
SESSION TEN
I could barely contain my rage. As soon as the guards left, I exploded.
“This time you’ve gone too far, Joker!”
“Whatever are you talking about, Doctor Lewis?”
“The ring, damn you! The goddamn ring!”
“You mean that little bauble I sent Dina? Think nothing of it.”
“It wasn’t ‘just a bauble,’ and you know it!”
When I’d answered my doorbell the night before, I’d been shocked to find Dina standing there with tears in her eyes. She threw her arms around me and told me how beautiful it was, and what a romantic way to propose. And then she showed me the ring—a huge solitaire, flawless, at least three carats. It was perfect, she said, the engagement ring she’d always dreamed of, and to think I’d sent it to her nestled in a bouquet of roses with the note: Dina—Make my life complete. Marry me. Hal.
I’d been planning to ask her to marry me as soon as I got on my feet financially, but I’d had nothing to do with this. I knew immediately who was behind it, though. I should have told her right then. But when I saw the look in her eyes, the joy in her face, I couldn’t. How could I take that ring off her finger and say it wasn’t from me? I wrapped my arms around her and said nothing.
“I won’t have you interfering in my life!”
“Who’s interfering?” he said through that grin. “I like you. I don’t want to see you settle for second best. In a few years you’ll be able to afford all these things on your own. But for now, it gives me pleasure to help you out. What’s so wrong with that?”
“You’re trying to compromise my judgment! And it won’t work!”
“Of course it won’t. We both know you’ve got too much integrity for that. By the way, there’s an engagement gift waiting for you in your apartment.”
That did it. I stormed out of the examining room. But deep within my gut was a strange new feeling, a growing awareness that it was my duty to render this . . . this Joker incapable of corrupting or harming anyone again.
CONFERENCE
“A pre-frontal lobotomy?” Dr. Hills said. “You must be joking!”
The irony of his choice of words was lost in the shocked silence around me. I’d gone directly from my session with the Joker to the psychiatric conference where I’d blurted out my recommendation. The rest of the psychiatric staff—Drs. Hills, Miller, and Bolland—were there, and I believe I stunned them all.
The solution had occurred to me as I’d entered the room. A pre-frontal lobotomy—surgical invasion of the frontal lobe of the brain. It had been used briefly with great success in the 1930s. Violent, agitated patients had become pussycats—gentle, placid, physically and emotionally in low gear. But the procedure had fallen out of favor because it was deemed too extreme. And because it was irreversible.
“Yes, I’m aware that it’s a radical suggestion,” I said, “but you’ve got to admit that this particular case warrants a radical solution. Demands it, I should think. Lobotomy is definitive therapy in the case of a patient as incorrigibly violent as the Joker.”
Dr. Hills said, “We’ll come under heavy fire from the patients’ rights groups merely for suggesting it. The ACLU, all the—”
“What about the rights of the people he will harm in the future when he escapes again?” I replied. “And we all know he will escape again. Let’s be honest, gentlemen: modern psychiatry has failed society in the case of the Joker. I know. I’ve gone through his past records. The man seems to escape at will. Then he goes on a rampage of murder and robbery, is caught, is returned to us, only to escape again for another rampage. No matter how we chain him, drug him, psychoanalyze him, he escapes. And he never pays a price for the harm he does! Between rampages, he’s given a clean, comfortable cell, three meals a day, and free medical care. For life!”
“But a lobotomy—?” Dr. Hills said.
“We’ve failed to contain him, we’ve failed to change him with therapy or control him with drugs, and the courts won’t send him to the chair. As physicians charged with treating the so-called criminally insane, I think we have a duty to consider the definitive therapy for his sort of behavior disorder.”
There was a long silence. Finally, Dr. Hills said, “I’ll take it up with the State Board of Medical Examiners.”
I left the conference room in a state of wild exhilaration. I might have been the new man on the staff but I was making my presence felt in no uncertain terms. And beyond that, I knew that my recommendation for lobotomy would prove to the Joker once and for all that Harold Lewis, M.D., was not for sale.
SESSION NINE-A
Numb, speechless, I stared across the table at the Joker. That smile . . . if only he’d stop smiling.
“Well?” he said. “Do you like your engagement gift?”
“Where—?” My mouth was dry. “Where did you get it?”
I’d come home last night to find an original Colin Whittier hanging on my wall. An original! An abstract of swirling blues and greens that made me think of the depths of the ocean . . . the eternal cycle of birth, life, and death . . . cold, ghastly, unutterably beautiful.
The cost of a Whittier had gone through the roof since his death at the Joker’s hands. Each was worth millions now. I’d never be able to afford a Whittier. Never. And the Joker had given me one.
The Further Adventures of The Joker Page 5
