by Paul Dini
He cut off and all the joy drained out of his face. “Oh. Wait. Now I remember why I scrapped that one.”
Harley peered at him anxiously, afraid to say something and afraid not to.
“Piranhas can’t smile,” he said, mournful and dispirited. “All those razor-sharp teeth are turned down in a permanent frown. Even my own Joker-toxin couldn’t make them grin.”
He tossed the plan away and sat down at the top of the steps. “Alas, bitter jest of fate!” he wailed, looking heavenward and shaking one fist dramatically. “My greatest death-trap shot to squadoo! All because I couldn’t make those vicious little guppies smile.” He lowered his head and slumped, the very picture of dejection.
Harley couldn’t stand to see him that way. She cuddled up next to him and took him in her arms. “I know how to make some smiles, puddin’,” she said in a playful, sultry voice.
His whole body stiffened under her touch.
“Puddin’?” But she knew it was hopeless; she’d done the wrong thing again.
A moment later, he was leading her down the stairs by her nose, pinching it so hard between his thumb and forefinger that she cried out on every step.
“Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow! That hurts! It really, really hurts! Please, puddin’—”
He pinched even harder as he led her to the door, opened it, then turned her around. “How many times do I have to tell you?” he roared, applying his foot to her backside. “Don’t call me puddin’!”
Harley scrambled to her feet just as he slammed the door in her face. She started to beg him to let her in but suddenly all the fight went out of her and she sank down to sit cross-legged in front of the door. Thrown out again; how many times was this? She’d lost count.
No, she hadn’t. This was the twenty-fifth time.
That averaged out at roughly three times a week for the past two months. She was lucky the weather was still warm. She’d better remember to wear her flannel onesie when it turned cold.
Who the hell did that? Who kicked a young blonde hottie out of bed before they even got into bed?
“Face it, Harl,” she sighed. “This stinks out loud.”
It did, too. She’d gone to college on a full gymnastics scholarship, and Gotham Med School had funded her with grants. She was the youngest psychiatrist ever hired at Arkham Asylum. And how had that worked out?
She was wanted by the law in two dozen states.
Okay, the career wasn’t going so well. What about her personal life?
She was hopelessly in love with a murderous psychopathic clown. Who had just kicked her out—literally—for the twenty-fifth time.
“What happened to me?” she said aloud. “What made my life crazier than a—a freakin’ March Harriet?”
Her throat tightened and tears began to well in her eyes as she looked up into the dark night overhead.
The dark night.
Abruptly the urge to cry was replaced by a much stronger urge to punch someone. Someone in particular: the dark knight. Batman.
Of course it was Batman—who else? It was always Batman, chasing her and her puddin’, spoiling everything, ruining date night, making the Joker so crazy that he took everything out on her.
Batman, whose life was so empty he was obsessed with ruining theirs. Everyone kept saying her puddin’ was psychotic. But what did you call a man who dressed up like a bat for the express purpose of harassing a couple in love—well-adjusted? Ready for primetime?Not crazy as a shithouse bat?
Yeah, that was how they rolled in Gotham City, the world’s biggest cult, where everyone was brainwashed to worship Batman and hate anybody he hated. Anyone who didn’t was declared criminal or crazy and ended up in Iron Heights or Arkham Asylum while Batman flitted around town, cosplaying and ego-tripping.
Harley sat for a while until she didn’t hear any more movement from inside. Then she picked up a broken chunk of cement on her left; the spare key was right where she’d left it. Harley quietly let herself back in and tiptoed up the steps to where the Joker had fallen asleep at his desk with his head pillowed on his arms.
Poor puddin’, she thought. He stirred, muttered “Batman” grumpily and subsided.
Harley shook her head. Crazy wasn’t just contagious, it was also cumulative; she had to do something about Batman before he drove the Joker so far out of his mind he never found his way back.
She began picking up all the papers on the floor and came across the Death of a Hundred Smiles. Harley loved the name; it sounded significant, historical even, like something devised by an ancient master of execution.
She was about to roll it up when she saw she was holding it upside down.
* * *
“This came in an hour ago.” Commissioner Gordon held out a small square package in black-and-red gift wrap.
“Addressed to you,” Harvey Bullock added.
Batman looked it over carefully. His gloves would protect him from any caustic or acidic substances, but if it released poison gas, the other two men would be at risk. Bullock would probably shake off any ill effects—the man was built like a tank. He didn’t move fast but he could withstand a lot of punishment. Jim Gordon wasn’t delicate but he was older, and it had only been a few days since the Joker had tried to kill him.
That had been only the latest of many attempts on Gordon’s life. His friendship with Batman made him a target. A lesser man might have retired early and left town with no forwarding address. Jim Gordon refused to be intimidated by anyone, whether it was a homicidal maniac like the Joker; or a new mayor who wanted his own stooges in key positions in the city government; or the corrupt and wealthy families who were used to buying anyone they wanted.
After this last incident, Jim Gordon would merely be less inclined to get his teeth cleaned. But then, he would use any excuse to get out of going to the dentist, anyway.
Batman unwrapped the package to reveal a DVD in a plain white sleeve. “I guess it’s movie night,” he said. “Did anyone make popcorn?”
Harvey Bullock looked grumpy as he turned on the TV and DVD player. “You hadda say ‘popcorn,’ didn’t you. Now I got a craving.” Batman suppressed a smile. When it came to food, Bullock was the most suggestible person he knew.
Harley Quinn appeared on the TV screen in full costume and make-up. But she wasn’t smiling.
“I hope this message reaches Batman before it’s too late.” She spoke not in her usual exaggerated Brooklyn accent but in what had to be her normal voice. It was shockingly un-ditsy. Batman and Gordon traded glances.
“I know you won’t believe me,” Harley went on, “but it’s no joke, I swear. Mr. J’s gone off his nut, and I mean for real.” She took a breath and leaned slightly closer to the camera. “After you stopped him from killing the commissioner, he swore he’d get even—not just with you but with the whole city. He’s going to wipe out everybody! I’ve seen the plans. There are gas bombs, nerve agents—horrible things! At rush hour tomorrow morning, Gotham becomes one great, big, grinning ghost town!”
Bullock hit the pause button. “You think she’s on the level?” he asked Gordon.
Gordon shrugged. “Let’s hear the rest.”
Bullock pressed play and all three men were shocked when Harley Quinn took off her harlequin hat, shook out her hair, and wiped her face clean of clown white. They’d all known who she really was, but it was shocking all the same. The last time Batman had seen her without make-up, she had been kneeling on the floor at Arkham Asylum, holding the Joker in her arms and glaring up at him with a mad, murderous rage more characteristic of a patient than a doctor.
After she had broken the Joker out of Arkham, Batman had talked to Joan Leland. At first Dr. Leland had been reluctant to say anything—the scandal was pretty embarrassing. No doubt she’d have lost her job if the Arkham board had been able to find anyone willing to take it.
When she did finally open up, Batman saw she was as bewildered as anyone else as to how such an intelligent young woman with so much promise could throw
it away for a criminally insane murderer. Dr. Leland said it might well be paranoid schizophrenia; Harleen was at the upper end of the age range for women who usually develop it, but not too old to rule it out. In some cases, the onset was so slow and gradual, it wasn’t caught for years, especially in a place like Arkham. Behavior that would raise flags anywhere else was business as usual there. Harleen’s exposure to the Joker could have exacerbated any undiagnosed illness. But constant contact with him might have caused her to have a psychotic break even if she’d been perfectly sane. The Joker could have that effect on people.
If so, the effect seemed to have worn off, and not a moment too soon. “I finally realize this isn’t funny anymore,” Harleen Quinzel was saying, and her voice trembled. “No, I’m wrong—this was never funny. I feel like I’ve been—I don’t know, stuck in some kind of weird place, some strange alternate dimension where everything was all warped and bent. But then suddenly I woke up back in the real world and now I can see clearly—I can see things as they really are. All the damage he’ll do, all the people he’ll kill. Unless you stop him, Batman.”
She swallowed hard and closed her eyes for a second. Then she took a steadying breath and looked directly at the camera again. “I can help you get him but you have to promise to protect me. If you truly want to save this city, come alone to pier sixteen at the port of Gotham tonight at midnight. I’ll hand over everything—complete details of the plot, the timetable, where to find the weapons—but only to you. It has to be you, Batman. You’re the only one he’s afraid of. You’re the only one who can stop him. If you don’t—” she shook her head. “It’s too horrible to think about.”
The screen went dark and, for a long moment, no one spoke.
“You heard her, Jim,” Batman said finally. “I have to go alone. If she sees anyone else, she’ll panic. The Joker’s had her under his control. Somehow she’s managed to snap herself out of it but she’s shaky. If she sees cops, she’s liable to fall back into her old state of mind.”
“I don’t see how she wised herself up after all that,” Harvey Bullock said. “She don’t look strong enough to argue about what’s for dinner.”
“Looks can be deceiving, Harvey,” said Batman. “Maybe the Joker’s plan for mass murder on such a grand scale was just too much for her and gave her the jolt she needed to come back to this planet. We have to treat her gently, cautiously. She’s a lot like someone who’s just escaped from a cult. If she gets spooked, she’ll fall back into her old mindset.”
“At least wear an earpiece so we can stay in touch,” Gordon said.
Batman nodded. “Just make sure you stay out of sight.”
At ten minutes to midnight, on the roof of the main building in the port of Gotham, Batman finally broke radio silence. “Jim,” he said quietly, resisting the urge to touch his earpiece.
“Go ahead, Batman.” Gordon sounded on edge.
“I’ve been here since ten thirty looking for hidden traps, henchmen, or any other nasty surprises,” Batman told him. “So far, nothing.”
“Any sign of her?” Gordon asked.
“Speak of the devil,” Batman replied as a shadow moved out of the surrounding darkness to stand in a circle of dim yellow light in the middle of the pier—a slender young blonde woman wearing a raincoat and carrying a briefcase. “On time, all alone, and looking pretty scared. Going dark.”
Which was a funny way to say he was going radio silent again, Batman thought; he was always dark.
* * *
“You have some information for me?” Batman asked quietly.
Harleen Quinzel jumped and turned around, one hand pressed to her chest. “Oh, my!” she said breathily. “S-sure. It’s all right here, just like I said.” She held up the briefcase.
She really was tiny, Batman thought, just like a gymnast. “Open it,” he told her.
She blinked up at him, momentarily baffled. “Oh! Of course! You’re thinking booby trap, right?” She gave a small nervous laugh as she opened the case and showed him the papers inside. “I don’t blame you, considering.”
Batman took out a couple of papers. They looked like schematics for something but the light was too poor to see them clearly.
“So, is that okay?” she asked, her voice hopeful.
“I want Jim Gordon to take a look at these. If what you say is true, the police will have to mobili—”
“TRAITOR!” roared a familiar voice from somewhere out on the water.
“Oh, no—noooooo!” Harleen Quinzel wailed.
Even in the bad light, Batman could see the Joker standing up in the approaching motorboat. He was holding a machine gun.
“Nobody turns stoolie on me and lives, do you hear? Nobody!” The Joker laughed maniacally and began firing.
“Down!” Batman dived for the weather-beaten wooden planks, pulling Quinzel with him and shielding her with his body. In the back of his mind, he was wondering how the Joker could have gotten so close without his hearing a motor. Still shielding Quinzel, he slipped a batarang out of his utility belt and whipped it toward the Joker. It put a stop to both the laughter and the shooting by taking his head clean off.
Batman leaped to his feet and saw the Joker’s head rolling around in the bottom of the boat as sparks sprayed from his neck. A robot? He was turning toward Harleen Quinzel when he felt a sudden sharp pain in the side of his neck and fell to his knees. Papers flew out of the open briefcase and scattered on the pier around him, magazine pages, takeout menus, flyers.
Fingers dug under the side of his cowl, found his earpiece, and yanked it out. “Sweet dreams, suckah,” she said in her ditz-voice.
* * *
The Brooklyn accent that had followed Batman down into darkness now led him up out of it.
“Lemme see, his arms are double-bound, ditto his legs—”
He tried to say something but could only produce a wordless groan.
“—took off the belt, triple checked all my knots and locks—”
There was something wrong with his head; all his weight seemed to be pressing against the very top of his skull. It was an effort to open his eyes, and when he did, nothing he saw made sense. Light fixtures stuck up from the floor and there was furniture on the ceiling. Barstools dangled around a bar where a tank was filling with water. There were some weird little shadows wiggling around in it. But the tank was hanging upside down from the ceiling—the water shouldn’t have stayed in it.
A familiar, clown-white face floated into view, bells on two floppy points jingling cheerfully, also upside down.
“Harley… Quinn…” Batman groaned.
“Oh, you’re awake!” she squealed. “Finally! Gee, that knockout drug really hit ya hard!” She stood back and gestured. “But you been hanging upside down for a while.” She drank something purple from a bottle. Grape soda? “All that blood rushing to your head’s gonna make you a little logy. Or a lot.” She leaned back and gave him a long up-and-down look. Or a down-and-up look. “Yeah, you won’t get outta this one.”
Batman fixed his gaze on a spot on the opposite wall while his inner ear tried to decide which way was up. “The Joker,” he managed after a bit. “Where—”
“Not this time, B-man,” Harley Quinn said cheerfully. “No Joker, no gas-bombs, no city in peril—just you, that tank, and me.”
The spot on the wall resolved itself into an upside-down, very distinctive swordfish. He was in Aquacade, Gotham City’s premiere seafood restaurant. Reservations were hard to come by. Unless you didn’t mind hanging from the ceiling after the place was closed.
“I want ya to know I went to a lot of trouble to pull this off,” Harley was saying in her annoying put-on ditz-voice. “Not only did I have to drag your carcass up to this place all by myself, but—” She gestured at the tank. “I had to raid every fish collector and aquarium in town to get enough piranhas for this stunt. And I hate fish! Ick!”
Had she just said piranhas? “Then why bother?” Batman asked.
“To show Mr. J I could pull off one of his gags!” As if she were a Girl Scout going for a merit badge. “It’s called ‘The Death of a Hundred Smiles,’ which has to be the best title for anything, ever. Mr. J gave up on it ’cause he couldn’t get the piranhas to smile.”
Yes, she’d said piranhas, all right, Batman thought. Unless he was dreaming, but that was entirely too much to hope for.
“But then, I had the bright idea of hanging the victim—which is to say, you, Batsie—upside down. That way, it’ll look to you like they’re all smiling! Pretty clever, huh?”
“Brilliant,” Batman said flatly. “Genius.”
Harley Quinn shrugged, laughing at him. “Okay, so you’re less than thrilled. I don’t blame ya. But for what it’s worth, this ain’t poisonal.”
“You mean ‘personal’?” He had to keep her talking, Batman thought.
“That’s what I said: poisonal.” Harley Quinn made a face at him. “Anyway, I actually enjoyed this little romp, ya know? But the time comes when a gal wants more from life. And what this gal wants now is to settle down with her puddin’.” She sighed and Batman could practically see cartoon hearts and Cupids dancing in the air around her head.
“You mean you and the Joker?” Batman said.
“Right-a-rooney!” Harley Quinn sang gleefully.
It was too much. Batman burst out laughing, making his whole body shake and sway over the tank.
“I never heard you laugh before,” Harley said uneasily, raising her voice to make herself heard. “I don’t like it.”
Batman laughed even harder.
“Cut it out!” she yelled. “Yer givin’ me the creeps!”
After another fifteen seconds or so, Batman let himself wind down. “Harley, you’re such a fool. The Joker doesn’t love anyone or anything except himself.”
