The Further Adventures of The Joker

by Martin H. Greenberg

  “Leave it on,” Gordon said curtly.

  “Yes sir.” He turned to go. “Sir?”

  “What is it?”

  “Do you think he sees it, or—”

  “Or what?”

  “Maybe he’s afraid.”

  “We’re all afraid, McCulley. Now good night.”

  McCulley disappeared down the hatch and Gordon shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, seeking warmth.

  By midnight, he accepted the truth. Batman was not going to appear. Commissioner Gordon walked up to the humming spotlight, whose heat beat against his face, and shut it down.

  He went down the roof hatch a saddened man.

  The next night it was Dawson Clade. Unlike the late Archibald Bittner, Dawson Clade was neither rich nor prominent. Clade was a down-and-out private detective.

  His last minutes of life were broadcast to Gotham City to the strains of The Twilight Zone theme while the Joker expressed his profound disappointment over Batman’s lack of response in a doleful Rod Serling voice.

  This time the Joker faced the camera while he “unmasked” his victim. Clade sat with his back to the audience. After the Joker finished outlining Clade’s face with the point of his knife, he peeled it away so the audience could glimpse bits of cartilage snap as flesh parted from bone.

  The Joker proudly displayed his trophy, turning it around like a stage magician proving that, yes indeedy, the handkerchief was empty. The audience had a good look at both sides—the pink outer mask and the raw inner flesh that looked like the inside of an eyelid.

  McCulley entered the commissioner’s office, white-faced.

  “Shall I turn it on, Commissioner?”

  Gordon sighed. “Yes. For one hour. Then shut it off and go home.”

  “You’ll be here?”

  “I’ll be here,” Gordon said leadenly. He picked up the phone and dialed the mayor directly. It would be their sixth conversation of the day—each one more strained than the one before.

  “I’m telling you, Gordon,” the mayor said without preamble, “if you have any idea who your Batman really is, it’s your duty to divulge it.”

  “We can’t hand him up to this madman, even if I did know.”

  “He’s a damned vigilante!”

  “But he’s not a criminal. It’s the Joker who’s cutting off faces.”

  “The citizenry is panicked. No one wants to end up—excuse the expression—facedown in an alley over a feud between a circus fugitive and a human bat. The people don’t see Batman as a hero in this one.”

  “Cooler heads will prevail.”

  “And where is Batman? Hiding?”

  “I don’t know,” Gordon said slowly.

  McCulley entered without knocking. “Another body, sir.”

  “Have to go, Mr. Mayor. I think Clade just turned up.”

  Gordon grabbed his hat and shoved out the door.

  Outside, he looked up and down the street, half expecting to see the Batmobile slither around the corner.

  When it didn’t materialize, he got into his car and drove off, his moustache points bristling.

  Gordon ducked under the yellow police-barrier tape and spoke to a detective at the entrance to an open basement on Crime Alley. A pair of M.E.s were inside working over a corpse lying on its stomach. They appeared reluctant to turn the body over.

  “Anything unusual?” he asked bluntly.

  “Other than the fact that the deceased has no face, no. But we’re still processing the crime scene.”

  “Keep at it,” Gordon said, turning to go. The first TV newsvans came around the corner causing Gordon to curse under his breath.

  They came at him, camcorders held high. Microphones were thrust at him like inquisitive antennae. And the questions began.

  “Commissioner Gordon, who’s next?”

  “No comment.” He tried to shove through the knot of reporters. They followed him like steel filings attracted to a moving magnet.

  “Commissioner Gordon, where is Batman?”

  “No comment.”

  “Commissioner Gordon, is Batman a coward?”

  “I don’t know!” Gordon said hotly. Then red-faced, he added, “I wish I knew.” And it hurt to say it. He ducked into his car and roared off.

  Bruce Wayne’s head started to throb as soon as the cab entered city traffic. He had had the identical headache only ten minutes into the ride from the airport when he’d arrived in Mexico City five days before. It was a pollution headache—one of the problems of being a North American vacationing in the most populous—polluted—city on earth.

  Out among the ruins of Teotihuacán. the air had been cleaner. But now, in the heart of the city—choked with pollution-spewing cars—his head began throbbing again. He sighed.

  “Driver.”

  “Si, señor?”

  “Hotel Nikko.”

  “No Zona Rosa?”

  “The Zona Rosa will be there in the morning. I’m suddenly not up for any nightlife tonight.”

  “Muy triste.”

  The taxi turned off Viaducto beneath the big electric Coca-Cola sign and skirted Chapultepec Park on the Paseo de la Reforma side.

  Bruce Wayne overtipped the driver and entered the spacious neo-Aztec hotel lobby. At the desk, he checked for messages. He was told there were none. It reminded him that he had told no one where he was vacationing.

  Wayne rode the elevator to his room, entered with his magnetic keycard, and took a bottle of purified water from the mini-bar. Kicking off his shoes, he sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the tightness in his head lessen now that he was out of open air. Only in Mexico. Beyond the window, lightning flashes illuminated the congested Mexico City skyline. It was going to be another elemental Mexican night.

  Sighing, Wayne turned on the TV. He had avoided television during his stay. But tonight, it was either that or boredom. He cruised the Spanish-language stations until he heard an American voice. It was a network news program. Wayne gave thanks for the miracle of cable and lay back to watch.

  “In Gotham City,” the newscaster said melodramatically, “the question tonight is—where is Batman? After two nights of unspeakable televised mutilations of Gotham citizens by the maniac who calls himself the Joker, that refrain haunts the nation. How much longer will these depradations go on? Will Batman, now widely believed to be in hiding, branded a coward by some, accept the Joker’s bizarre ransom demand to unmask on camera? Or is the long nightmare for Gotham City only beginning?”

  Wayne sat up abruptly, nearly upsetting his drink. “Here with the latest is Gotham City correspondent Lesley—”

  Bruce Wayne’s eyes hardened as video clips of the mutilation murders of Archie Bittner and Dawson Clade were replayed.

  He watched enough to get the gist of the situation and shut off the TV. He called down to the front desk.

  “I’m checking out. Immediately. Please have a cab waiting to take me to the airport.”

  As Bruce Wayne packed, the lightning storm outside his window intensified. But he had no eyes for its elemental fury. His mind was thousands of miles away, in Gotham City. His city. The city he had sworn to protect.

  Alfred Pennyworth started from sleep. The sound of a car on the circular gravel driveway outside Wayne Manor was an unfamiliar one, but it promised hope. He struggled into a flannel bathrobe and hurried downstairs.

  A cab driver was putting two suitcases on the hall floor. Looking tired, Bruce Wayne peeled a twenty-dollar bill from his billfold.

  “Keep the change,” he told the driver. The door shut behind him.

  “Master Bruce!” Alfred cried. “You should have called. I would have come for you.”

  “No time,” Bruce Wayne said in a flinty voice.

  “I tried to reach you, sir.”

  “A vacation, Alfred, is no vacation if everyone has your phone number.”

  “Of course, sir. I hadn’t realized Wayne Foundation matters pressed so heavily on your shoulders.”

  “
Not that,” Wayne said, shucking off a Chesterfield coat. “It’s the other work.”

  “I understand, sir. I assume you’ve heard the terrible news. Do you require anything?”

  “Coffee,” Wayne said, striding for the grandfather clock in one corner. He pushed it aside, revealing a secret door. “And I’ll take it below.”

  Bruce Wayne was poring over the last two days’ newspapers at an ornate ebony desk when Alfred came down the Batcave steps carrying a sterling silver tea service.

  Wayne regarded the pot of tea as it was laid before him and remarked, “Tea?”

  “Better for the nerves, sir. There is coffee, as well.”

  Frowning, Wayne accepted the tea. His eyes returned to the latest edition of the Gotham Gazette.

  “The place where it all began . . .” he mused. “Only he and I know where that is.”

  Alfred gasped. “Surely you do not contemplate—!”

  “I don’t have a choice, Alfred,” Bruce Wayne said coldly.

  “But if you give in to this . . . this terrorist’s demands, what is to stop him from—”

  “The Batman.”

  “Sir?”

  Bruce Wayne stood up in the crepuscular atmosphere of the Batcave. The gold shield on his gray chest caught the light, making the nonreflective bat emblem seem like a bottomless black hole.

  “The Batman will stop him,” Wayne repeated. “This is between the Joker and him.”

  Dutifully, Alfred lifted the black ribbed cloak and cowl of the Batman to his master’s shoulders.

  “Not yet, Alfred,” Wayne said crisply. “There’s something you must do first.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  Commissioner James Gordon braved the new November winds on the roof of police headquarters impatiently. The stars were out tonight. He always dreaded cloudless nights like this, but somehow the clear night sky no longer mattered. It was the third night. And the body of the third victim—investment banker H.P. Quincy—had been found floating skull-down in the Gotham River. His face would arrive wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag with the morning mail, just as the others had.

  Gordon switched on the Bat-Signal. Its ghostly finger stabbed at the stars. But without cloud cover, the bat emblem was lost in the stars.

  Gordon sighed. He wondered why he kept faith with the masked man whose name he never knew.

  He didn’t hear the roof hatch ease up and a tall inky figure emerge. The figure padded forward, wrapped in a ribbed black cloak against the bitter night. Burning eyes looked out from a cowl whose erect ears resembled Gothic church steeples.

  “Gordon.” The voice was sibilant and breathy.

  Commissioner Gordon turned just as the silhouette of the Batman spread its cloak to display a lean gray-clad body.

  “Batman! Where have you been?”

  “Never mind. Long story. What counts is that I’m here now.”

  “I had given up on you.”

  “Had you?” the other said, nodding to the Bat-Signal’s attenuated beam. His upraised cloak kept his face in shadow.

  “Almost,” James Gordon admitted.

  “I’m going to meet him.”

  “I can’t stop you.”

  “Would you if you could?”

  “The city’s in an uproar. The mayor wants your head. Politically, I’m between hammer and anvil.”

  “The mayor wants my head and the Joker wants my face. I much prefer the Joker’s alternative. I’m going to have to unmask. I thought you’d want to be the first to behold my true face.”

  Gordon started. “I-I’d be honored,” he said solemnly.

  The inky black figure drew closer. His boots were eerily silent on the tarpaper roof. It was as if he glided instead of walked.

  As he entered the Bat-Signal’s backglow, his pale pointed chin became visible. And the thin-lipped scarlet leer it framed.

  “Mwee hee heee!” the Joker cried, throwing back his cowl.

  “Joker!”

  “Did you think that you were immune, Gordon?”

  Gordon took an involuntary step backwards. “Stay back!”

  “The Batman doesn’t care about the ordinary folk of Gotham,” the Joker growled. “So I thought I might lure him from his belfry with a dear, dear, friend. You!”

  Commissioner Gordon retreated to the roof edge. There was no escape. The bat cloak followed him, enveloping like a shroud. He never felt the hypodermic bite into his forearm.

  In the network of alleys near police headquarters, Batman parked the Batmobile in a deserted loading dock. He kept his cloak tight about him to stifle the betraying yellow-gold of his utility belt and chest emblem as he flitted from shadow to shadow.

  Outside police headquarters, twin green globes shed a welcoming glow, but the Dark Knight ignored them. His shadowed eyes went to the rooftop where moths danced in a tunnel of light like paper bats.

  Batman tested the old brick building façade with gloved fingers and began to scale in utter soundlessness.

  He slid over the roof edge like something out of a Bram Stoker nightmare. The roof was deserted, the Bat-Signal unattended. He reached over to shut it off when the backglow reflecting on glass stopped him. He strode over to the reflection and knelt.

  He touched a familiar pair of eyeglasses resting on a pasteboard playing card. The leering face of the Joker stared back at him through the lenses.

  The visible part of his face hardened into a grimace of hatred. Batman straightened up, crushing the card in one hand.

  In a swirl of cloak fabric, he turned and disappeared over the parapet.

  High above, the moths swirled around the Bat-Signal as if feeding on a ghostly rag.

  “Get those cameras set up!” The Joker called the order down from the gloomy catwalks of a vast industrial storage building.

  Dutifully, Punkin Head and Jack-O’-Lantern hefted video cameras onto their Halloween shoulders.

  “I don’t get it, Boss,” Jack grumbled. “Why are we bothering with all this junk? He won’t show. And even if he does—”

  “Leave the thinking to me, piefilling-for-brains,” the Joker snarled. He turned to Commissioner Gordon, who sat with his wrists and ankles bound to the armrest and legs of a wooden chair perched precariously close to the catwalk’s lip.

  “You’re mad!” he said gratingly.

  “Thanks for the reminder,” the Joker said acidly. “I had almost forgotten. And I’m getting fed up with your whining.” He looked around the box-strewn catwalk, saying, “What to do, what to do? Ah!” His maniac eyes alighted on a carved jack-o’-lantern. Grinning, he upended it over Gordon’s furious head.

  “If you get hungry,” the Joker told the upside-down jack-o’-lantern face as he descended the catwalk steps, “feel free to gnaw.”

  “Cameras all set up, boss,” Punkin Head said, throwing the Joker an A-OK sign.

  “Take your positions,” the Joker snapped. “And let the charade begin. If he’s going to come, he won’t wait for tomorrow night.”

  Batman piloted the Batmobile through the industrial side of Gotham City. Through the knife-nosed steel bat’s head mounted on the grille, he watched the headlights sweep the road. He had taken the old Batmobile out of storage. It was like driving an aircraft carrier on wheels. But the sporty open-cockpit version would not do for tonight’s showdown.

  The smokestacks of the Monarch Playing Card Factory came into view. He could almost smell the nostril-stinging vapors from an adjoining chemical plant even through the Batmobile’s bulletproof Plexiglas dome.

  It was there it had all begun. It was there that Batman had first accosted a red-hooded thief in the act of a crime. And it was there that the nameless man, fleeing the dreaded Batman, had fallen into the industrial waste sluice to emerge, white-faced and crack-grinned, as the Joker.

  The gate came into view. Batman threw the wheel sharply to the right. The massive bat head rammed the padlocked fence apart. He accelerated. A corrugated loading door appeared in his bouncing headlight be
ams. The throaty roar of the Batmobile’s engine became a song.

  The door crumpled, and lifted, to bounce off the cockpit bubble. The Batmobile slewed right, sending a stacked pyramid of industrial drums rumbling and rolling in all directions. It skidded to a stop in the middle of the open concrete floor.

  Batman waited.

  “Did someone knock?” It was the Joker’s mad voice.

  His narrow face peered up from a stack of drums.

  Batman picked up a dashboard microphone and spoke into it. His steely amplified voice reverberated off the walls.

  “I’m here, Joker.”

  “Noooo!” the Joker mocked. “And I thought you were the lead float of the Macy’s Parade.” He snapped his fingers. Punkin Head and Jack-O’-Lantern scooted down from the catwalks, lugging video cameras on their shoulders like a lunatic TV newscrew. They clambered atop the Batmobile, pressing their lenses to the dome.

  “Any time you’re ready,” the Joker prompted.

  Batman shook his head. “Commissioner Gordon, first,” he said. “I have to know that he’s alive.”

  “Alive?” the Joker squealed. “He’s positively jumping with enthusiasm.” The Clown Prince of Crime retreated into the shadows and pressed a wall switch. Overhead machinery started to grind. And down from the catwalk shadows came Commissioner Gordon, bound to a wooden chair, his head encased in an upside-down jack-o’-lantern. Gordon struggled in his suspended seat, making the chain hoist rattle like a skeleton. The chair legs clicked as they touched down beside the Clown Prince of Crime.

  “You offered truce conditions,” Batman said evenly.

  “I give you my word you’ll be allowed to leave unmolested,” the Joker said. “If your performance is up to par. Ratings, you know.”

  “Throw in Gordon,” Batman added. “Or no deal.”

  “That wasn’t part of our bargain,” the Joker sniffed.

  “It is now,” Batman said, his voice brittle. “Take it or leave it.”

  The Joker’s eyes gleamed avidly. “And if I leave it?”

  Batman gunned the Batmobile. It surged ahead, throwing the Joker’s henchman onto the oil-stained concrete. The Joker cowered behind Commissioner Gordon, his eyes for once wider than his ear-threatening grin.