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“And the nightmare begins,” Bruce muttered, taking the
stairs from the Batcave three at a time. He half-expected Alfred to be
waiting with his tux on a hanger and a sarcastic remark cued up when the
clock passage opened: “Miss Selina will be moved I’m sure, sir.
Allowing yourself a full nine-second cushion reveals the obvious importance
you’ve placed on the occasion.”
It didn’t happen. The study was empty, as was the
hall outside. It was only when he’d made the skidding turn into the
Great Hall like he used to as a boy that he saw Selina waiting between the
stairs and the foyer, in her evening dress, purse in hand and that blasé
tilt of the head when Batman “surprised her” at a vault where he was clearly
expected.
“Cutting it close,” she said dryly as he ran past.
“Murder! Body gone, Alfred car,” he called, taking
those stairs three at a time as well.
“The disappeared body wasn’t going to be back on its
slab by morning,” Selina argued to nobody once he had gone. “And if it
was, we’d have a whole new case. Alfred’s already bringing the car
around. You didn’t imagine Alfred
Used-to-Your-Battitude-and-Prepared-for-Anything Pennyworth was sitting
around waiting for your suggestions on how to minimize the damage when
Psychobat priorities upended the one event meant to buy us the wiggle room
to get through the fondant and bridal lace nightmare with identities
intact.”
“Ready,” Bruce said, trotting down the stairs with a
self-satisfied grin. “Did you say something?”
“Not a word,” Selina lied. “But at the risk of
channeling you on the way to a Demon sting, ‘Are you clear on the plan?’”
“Selina, there have been three murders in six days and
now a body is—”
“And that’s a tragedy. But those victims are
still going to be dead tomorrow, and this is an engagement party. Our
engagement, as in not something I can show up to without you or cover if you
disappear once we get there. We need this, Bruce. The blue blood
triangle is lined up: Ashton-Larraby, Bantree and Flay. If we nail
this tonight, if we spike it, then it’s done. The social
cover we need to exclude undesirables from the guest list, to duck out of
the rehearsal dinner if we need to, to explain why the bridal bouquet can
talk or the best man keeps disappearing into the bar with a 5th dimensional
leprechaun. Bruce, you know what those people are like, they
can ignore anything. If they want to. If it’s
embarrassing to someone they don’t want embarrassed, that steely resolve to
carry on and pour the champagne, we need that. And you just happen to
be Bruce Wayne, so we can get it as long as you don’t trip the ‘Oh dear,
like his playboy bachelor days’ tsk-tsk. They will do it for you,
they’ll do it for us, we just have to give them the Mr. and Mrs.
Wayne they want. Tonight, just this once.”
“This means a lot to you, doesn’t it,” Bruce said.
“It does,” she said softly. “I want to be your
wife, and I’d been thinking of the wedding as just a lot of nonsense to get
through in order to get there. But now that it’s really happening,
yeah, I realize I do want it. It’s more than an empty ritual ‘for
them;’ it’s an affirmation. We belong together, and I belong in
this part of your life too. We deserve this, Bruce, we’ve
earned it, it’s our right and I want to claim it. We beat the
odds, we beat everything. We deserve each other and we deserve
a very proud and very public victory lap… And I don’t want some
presumptuous, self-important thing crawling in from our other lives,
lighting the Bat-signal and—”
There was a half-knock and the front door opened
abruptly. Alfred was there, holding a small package wrapped in green
paper.
“No,” Selina said.
“Beg your pardon, sir, miss. This object was
lying on the front steps as I drove up.”
“No,” Selina repeated, pointing at it like a dog’s
puddle on the carpet.
“We’ll read it in the car,” Bruce said hurriedly.
“You can’t, you have to test it, you have to x-ray…”
Selina started to say.
“We can safely assume it’s from Nigma,” Bruce said,
flashing the trademark green wrapping at her while putting a hand at the
small of her back to steer her towards the door. “And the one thing
you have convinced me of in the course of our relationship is that he’s not
going to blow us up. Like you said, we can’t be late. Alfred,
the car’s idling out front, right?”
It would take the Bentley twenty-six minutes to reach
the Butterfield, and Bruce wouldn’t be wasting one of them. He opened
the package to reveal layers of what looked like gauzy cheesecloth wrapped
around a sheet of stiff, yellowed paper, roughly textured as if it were
covered in masking tape. An Egyptian scene was depicted on one side,
with writing in dark reddish ink on the other.
“He’s gone the extra mile,” Bruce said, rubbing the
pads of his fingers over the surface. “It’s papyrus. Modern but
clearly authentic, handmade.”
“Showing off too,” Selina said, noting the writing on
the back. “When did he start leaving riddles in Greek?”
“Just now,” Bruce admitted. “You didn’t tell him
how you were feeling, did you? About the wedding, about the party?”
“Of course not, that’s personal. I mean, he’s a
friend but that’s really personal. I only told you, why?”
“Because I don’t have a Rosetta Stone in my pocket, and
this was left for us to find as we were leaving. I’m supposed to be
turning us around and going back to the cave right now.”
“You don’t read Greek?” Selina asked.
“I read a little, but these squiggles, with Nigma’s
wordplay and obscure references, not to mention the
etymology angle, no way. It was left to ruin our evening.”
“That’s crazy,” Selina shook her head. “He was
helpful when we announced the engagement. He made hashtags to push
specific rogues to take the news in a certain way. He was on our
side.”
“And then Ivy nearly killed him. (Delta… epsilon)
Maybe he blames us. (That’s an epsilon isn’t it? It doesn’t
look anything like his usual e.) Maybe he wants payback.”
“Blames me, you mean.”
“Selina.”
“It’s an epsilon. Delta, epsilon, sigma, omicron,
(and I basically shut him in a room with a rampaging mutant tree monster and
then electrocuted it) Um, a u with an umlaut? I have no idea what that
is.”
“Might be Phoenician, Proto-Sinaitic, an Egyptian
hieroglyph or a sloppy upsilon. Delta, epsilon, sigma, omicron,
upsilon, gamma, kappa. (You were trying to rescue him.) Desoúgk.
Desoúnk? (You did rescue him, why would he possibly—) This isn’t
a word.”
“To say nothing of what happened to Matt. And
Harvey. (Might be a proper name.)”
“Selina, ώα ψαριών is ‘spawn’.”
Built in 1892, the Butterfield was the youngest of
Gotham’s oldest private clubs and it had always been a bit of a rebel:
turning its shoulder to Fifth Avenue where its rivals stood like proud
cathedrals of privilege, and facing East 60th instead. Its architect
Stanford White boasted “the scale of the building and the nature of its
materials will give it an appearance unlike any in Gotham.” It was a
little too much rebel for the generations that followed, and the Butterfield
adopted the conservative policies, dress code and club rules of its
stodgiest rivals. There was, for example, a strict prohibition on the
use or display of cell phones, PDAs and gadgets in any of the public areas.
Guests wanting to use such devices were “permitted to do so only within the
telephone booths located throughout the building.”
“Gladys Ashton-Larraby.” Bruce said the name like a
curse as he got out of the car and looked up at that imposing gate, for of
course it was she who’d picked this location for the party. He repeated it
graciously when she greeted them at the door, placing both her hands on his
elbows like some ancient masonic greeting, and then squeezing them as she
shot air kisses around his ear with murmurs of “Your dear mother” and “so
very proud.” He thought it a third time with the original cursing
inflection as she subjected Selina to the same treatment.
Selina who could hold a grudge as dearly as any rogue,
Selina who was rarely inclined to forgive and never forgot. After the
disastrous Gotham Post party, the idiocy at the polo match, after Gladys had
followed her into the powder room on her first visit to the Bristol Country
Club wanting to know why the Ashton diamonds were never deemed cat-worthy,
Selina had given her blessing to all of this. She had nothing but
gracious smiles when Gladys broached the idea. And why? Because
it was Gladys Ashton-Larraby who started the Mrs. Wayne talk at Dick and
Barbara’s wedding.
“Let’s be fair, Bruce. She called it when you and
I were both very firmly stuck in denial. Why not let her strut a bit?”
That’s how she saw it. Bruce had argued that if they wanted to “be
fair,” Dick was the first to “call it” (and Batman had given him a fair
amount of grief for it). Selina had agreed but pointed out (correctly,
damn her) that Dick would have no interest in throwing them the type of
engagement party they needed, nor would a Grayson shindig have the social
clout her plan required.
After the air kisses and masonic greeting they were
sent to check their coats and walk the rooms, coo over the floral
arrangements and perhaps sneak a quick sip of champagne before joining
Gladys in the receiving line for the arrivals.
“You endured that well,” Selina whispered as soon as
they were clear.
“Ridiculous woman,” Bruce grimaced.
“I got drunk at the sound of the words ‘Mrs. Wayne,’
you had a six patrol meltdown and picked a fight with Alfred, then we both
took it out on Jonathan Crane. Who’s ridiculous?”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
Selina grinned.
“Remember it how you want; we both panicked. And
remember why we’re doing this. The code these people live by,
tonight’s guest list and the wedding should pretty much overlap. There will
be a few Gladys doesn’t know, of course, but it would embarrass her if we
have dozens of people she didn’t invite, which gives me cover to exclude
them. How’s that for some old-fashioned Katz Collection maneuvering?”
“It’s not your worst scheme,” Bruce admitted. “If
only she didn’t have to host it here. I’ve got a riddle in Greek in my
pocket and have to spend the night sneaking off to the internet in three
minute bursts.”
“Oh send it to the cave for five minutes and look at
this,” Selina said, eyes lit with delight as they stepped into the Gilded
Age ballroom done up for the occasion.
“You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” Bruce asked.
Selina shook her head:
“Skylight over the penthouse dining room, third floor
President’s Foyer—”
“For the Whitney portrait.” Bruce graveled.
“Through the J.P. Morgan room and down to the library—”
“For the Visscher letters.”
“And I came to a luncheon once in the Governor’s Room
so I could run into someone coming out of a lecture in the Morton Room.
I needed his key to a…” she trailed off, looking up at the ceiling mural and
giggled. “But I’ve never been in here.”
“It’s a little Versailles for my taste,” Bruce said,
noting the wall of gilded mirrors reflecting the floor-to-ceiling windows
opposite.
“Except that view outside is Robinson Park not
Versailles. Get with the program, stud, your city, grunt. And I
really meant the flowers and the candles. It’s beautiful. All
for us, all this trouble they’ve gone to. C’mon, this is nice.
People are happy for us.”
He walked her to one of the windows, traced a finger
down a strand of hair to her shoulder, and looked into her eyes.
“You’re counting down how long you have to do this
before we talk riddle,” she whispered.
“How well you know me,” he whispered back, managing to
infuse the voice with a hint of bat-gravel.
“Does it really say ‘spawn’?”
“I think it says ‘spawn of the sun,’ and in
ancient Egypt—”
“The sun was Ra. Ra spawn. Bruce, when
Eddie has a warning about Talia, he doesn’t send a riddle, he calls and says
‘I’ve got dish. Want to meet at Starbucks or the Iceberg?’”
“Selina, riddles are not warnings; they’re taunts.
Or threats.”
“There you are!” a new voice called, and Randolph
Larraby approached like a man on a mission. “Bruce, I’m to introduce
you to Patrick, the sommelier, and superficially discuss the wines we’ve
picked out for tonight while making sure you find your way back to Gladys
before the guests start arriving. Selina, Old George the maître d’ is
waiting to introduce himself. I believe if you pass through the bar on
the way to powder your nose, you’ll give him a chance to make it look
unplanned.”
Bruce and Selina’s eyes met.
Allowing themselves to be managed.
By Ashton-Larrabys.
Being the Mr. and Mrs. Wayne the social register
wanted.
Just for tonight.
“You know in Amy Vanderbilt’s day, more than half the
engagement parties were a surprise. You were invited to a dinner and
had no idea what it was about, before the announcement hit the newspaper.
Seems a shame now… Twitter. Hashtag: Two Hearts Beat As One.”
Bruce made the obligatory laugh and passed the Gardners
on to Selina, who managed a similar laugh.
“That’s the fifth person that’s referenced one of
Nigma’s hashtags,” Bruce hissed after they’d gone.
“I know, but it’s an obvious thing to say coming in the
door. It’s about the engagement, it’s something light and funny that
everyone knows and everyone saw.”
“It’s something he did to defuse the rogues,” Bruce
said through his teeth.
“Not the first time the PLUs have been eerily
rogue-like,” Selina noted, and then broke into a new smile of welcome to Ned
and Charlotte Mandell. Bruce turned and everyone shook hands,
exchanged pleasantries, and as soon as they’d passed on, Selina turned back
to Bruce. “It’s a coincidence.”
“Is it? It could be a message, the hashtags after
the riddle. Wouldn’t be hard to contrive. Neural linguistic
programming or one of Tetch’s devices—”
He broke off to greet Barry Hobbs, who could never
disguise his contempt for all things Wayne, but now…
“My congratulations, Bruce. And my compliments,
Selina.”
…the frost of his forcing himself through social
formalities was compounded by fear. He’d glimpsed Catwoman the
predator at that last LexCorp party and he regretted provoking her.
He’d been fearing the worst when the news came that Luthor’s hedge fund
collapsed, that his algorithm somehow made billions in the aftermath, and if
he didn’t want Lex finding out, he had to make her happy. He now found
himself almost bowing over her hand rather than shaking it. And then
attempting to save face, he coughed on it. He apologized, Bruce
offered a lozenge, and Barry slunk away miserably.
“We may have overplayed that hand,” Bruce whispered
when he’d gone.
“I know. He’ll be back and he’ll be pissed,”
Selina agreed. “But he’s not tonight’s problem. And it can’t be
what you’re thinking with Ra’s and Talia. Eddie despises her, and
she’s off and happily settled with Brady, right? Ra’s is in an
Atlantis jail, and even if he wasn’t, Eddie wouldn’t touch him with a barge
pole.”
“Alright, suppose it’s not Nigma,” Bruce began, then
trailed off. The crimefighter whose life depended on awareness of his
surroundings was suddenly on edge. Selina was next… “Bruce” …his name
uttered so softly it was almost as if she’d thought it rather than saying it
aloud. Then Gladys, a sharp intake of breath that would have gone
unnoticed by anyone other than Batman on alert.
“Bruce, I am so sorry,” she whispered. “He’s
supposed to be in California. He never comes East anymore.”
Bradford Dormont, Ford everywhere except his book
covers, was oozing across the foyer escorting a woman. Vivian was it?
Vivian Chase, a climber Bruce had dated once or twice, right around the time
he figured out it was more memorably obnoxious not to bother with their
names. Then as now, she wasn’t important. Ford Dormont on the
other hand…
“Randolph,” Vivian gushed, and Bruce studied her with a
detective’s eye. There were no signs of guilt. She was thrilled
to be here, but it wasn’t the thrill being at the center of a drama…
“Gladys.” …It made sense. She’d married a financier now doing seven
years for insider trading, and she’d somehow held on to enough money and
goodwill to remain in society. She was thrilled to have climbed so
high, to be making it inside the imposing gates of the Butterfield, but she
had no inkling that allowing Ford Dormont to accompany her was any kind of
faux pas.
“Vivian, dear,” Gladys was saying—and Selina was right.
There was something positively rogue-like in the way she could pack so much
energetic revulsion into such a superficial greeting.
Ford lingered talking to Randolph, and Bruce waited. It wasn’t typical behavior for a ‘walker’ but Ford Dormont was no longer typical of the usually gay, usually closeted single men of an earlier generation, with good suits, impeccable manners and just enough connections to hang around the fringes of society escorting widows and divorcees. He’d become a celebrity in his own right, parlaying the inside knowledge of the walkers into a series of gossipy novels that made him—in his view, at least—a peer of Truman Capote and Dominick Dunne. The books had slowed to a trickle since he turned sixty, but he remained ferociously relevant—in his view, at least—through a column in Mayfair magazine. He’d boasted through his literary doppelganger that his subjects loved reading about themselves in Mayfair, which is why they continued to invite him. The truth was apparent in Gladys’s cold greeting. He wasn’t invited; he came.
“Bruce, congratulations,” Vivian cooed. “What
changes the years bring, eh?” He didn’t remember enough of their break
up (if two dates even qualified for the term) to know if it was a barb.
He murmured something complimentary and introduced her to Selina, then
turned to face the gossip-mongering namedropping novelist obsessed with
crime among the upper class.
As for the supposed joy of seeing yourself on the
page, Bruce had appeared twice in Ford’s novels and it was a pleasure he
could do without. The character he called Manderson Hume showed up in
Ford’s first novel. The villain of the piece identified himself as
such by declaring “The only respectable way to come in to money is to
inherit it,” and Manderson overheard, took offense, and punched him.
He was herded off by sympathetic onlookers (“Drunk as usual, poor man”) and
didn’t appear again for nine books (although there were sixteen excruciating
callbacks to Winkie Allen’s dining room where Manderson Hume had punched
Reid Nogales the night Sissy Banks bought the Monet).
Ford stood before him now looking ten years older than
when Bruce had seen him last. The salt and pepper hair had gone
completely white, he seemed an inch shorter, and there were more wrinkles
around his mouth and neck.
“Bruce Wayne, Gotham’s poor little rich boy, tormented
by injustice, made dissolute and debauched by the anguish of crime
unpunished and unatoned, finds peace at last…” he eulogized in his
high-pitched gravelly sing-song. Bruce forced a smile and started the
turn to include Selina in the conversation, hoping to get the joint greeting
and introduction over with as soon as possible, until the next words froze
the social auto-pilot in a blast of instinctive, angry, defensive Batman.
“…by finding love with a criminal.”
The old eyes shown with lusty enthusiasm, and Bruce
realized: Irony. Exquisite, literary irony. For an author whose
entire career was romans à clef among Gotham’s elite—crime among
Gotham’s elite—for an author obsessed with crime among Gotham’s elite whose
creative output had dwindled to nothing, the prospect of Bruce Wayne
marrying Selina Kyle must be the Holy Grail. A literary and dramatic
irony nestled in the very thing he had always written about, a literary and
dramatic irony that would elevate his final work above the “Judith Krantz in
pants” moniker that had always dogged him. For a decade, he’d been
coasting on a reputation that was unlikely to outlive him. With Bruce
and Selina, he could go out with a bestseller and more, a bestseller
recognized for its literary merit.
Bruce introduced Selina, who of course overheard his
epithet and wasn’t going to ignore it.
“A criminal who’s had quite a run being misrepresented
by ‘biographers,’ tabloids and a major motion picture,” she smiled like she
was beyond noticing any new fictions Ford could dream up.
He seemed to take it as a compliment, taking her
extended hand with both of his as he said “There is a peculiar
insistence denying you the privileged origin that makes you fit in here so
beautifully. We must fix that.” There was a sinister undertone
on the last words, like a serial killer in a movie dropping his facade and
revealing himself to his victim. “We’ll talk later,” he promised,
caressing her hand like a crystal ball. “I’ll tell you the tidbits
about Bruce that didn’t make it into my book.”
It was a creepy performance, and anyone who hadn’t
dealt with Joker up close and personal might have been unnerved. Bruce
and Selina simply watched him go, and then looked at each other and
shrugged.
“I don’t get it,” she murmured. “His books trace
six bits of gossip through a string of parties and lunches while somebody
with money gets away with murder. All the people he likes look
fabulous, the ones he doesn’t are plastic surgery disasters, there’s a price
tag on every orchid and sable cuffs on every suit. The same six bits
of news, repeated like the rhymes in a villanelle.”
“Well brace yourself, we’re going to be the A story he
follows those six bits of gossip through.”
“Have you killed someone?” Selina asked flatly, and
Bruce gave an unamused head tilt. “’Cause I haven’t,” she added.
“Don’t dismiss him. He’s probably harmless, but
he has noticed things that no one else did.”
“You punched Jim Endicott in someone’s dining room?”
“No,” Bruce chuckled. “I’ll tell you later.”
Trip Corcoran arrived with Samantha Ambrose and Liv
Bantree. Gladys warned them Ford was back in Gotham and they clustered
around her reminiscing about who was who in his last book. It gave
Bruce and Selina an opening to talk freely.
“Suppose it’s not Nigma,” Bruce said quietly.
“We've been assuming the riddle is from him because it came to the manor,
but Ra’s knows and so does Talia. Either of them could be pulling
something and trying to hide it as a Riddler missive.”
“Point me to one of those phone booths, I’ll call and
ask him point blank if he sent it,” Selina said.
“Later. I’m going first,” Bruce said. “I
want another look at the text and then another run at Google.”
“Be quick,” Selina said. “Everyone will be here
soon, and once the line breaks up, I’d rather not mingle alone with Mr.
We’ll-Talk-Later out there waiting with the Manderson Hume version of your
exploits.”
Bruce grunted.
The second time Bruce appeared in a Bradford Dormont
novel, Manderson Hume (who punched Reid Nogales in Winkie Allen’s dining
room the night Sissy Banks bought the Monet) goes to the Union Club.
The doorman greets him by name as he holds the door, the maitre d’ greets
him as he enters the library and brings him his favorite scotch. Later
he brings another, and then a third. This would not be remarkable at
the Butterfield, the Empire Club or the Knickerbocker, but it was worth
noting at the Union Club because Manderson Hume was not a member.
The passage always bothered Bruce because he hadn’t
ever bothered joining the Union Club and he did show up ‘drunk’ one night in
Batman’s early days when he needed an alibi after a Scarecrow takedown went
bad. He expected them to throw him out. He would make a scene,
there would be a tactful paragraph in the police blotter the next day that
he could call attention to by trying to cover it up. But nothing
happened. After they let him in, after he stumbled around, knocked a
bronze off its stand, poured a snifter of Armagnac into an Etruscan urn and
seemed in danger of vomiting on the Savonnerie rug, absolutely nothing
happened. The next day, the implacable but transparent denials that he
was even there provided a more convincing alibi than any police blotter could
have. And Ford Dormont knew. Nothing about Batman, not that the
alibi was staged or the drunkenness faked, but he knew the protective shield
that had formed spontaneously around Thomas Wayne’s son, and Bruce wasn’t
thrilled with the mind capable of that insight looking closer at him or
Selina.
“Not thrilled” deepened to real concern as he made his
way to the phone booths behind the Great Hall. He heard snatches of
conversations that sounded Dormontian. Morsels of gossip that suddenly
had the feel of those trashy novels: He slept with the nanny.
They paid to sit next to the duke. He can lose a million dollars in
that high stakes poker game and take it on the chin, but a few months
working with that awful woman and he was drinking again…
That was on his way to the phone booth. On the
way back: How much did they pay to sit next to the duke? Did you
hear he slept with the nanny? And apparently his first date with
Selina was in Rome.
He had to negotiate a number of waiters on his way back
to Selina, trays of champagne seemingly popped into his path along with
fresh twists on the gossip as he moved around them: They paid a fortune
to sit next to the duke each year at the Clarence House benefit. It
wasn’t his gambling losses, it was being thrown together with that dreadful
woman again that started the drinking... The receiving line had broken
up. Hiding in rehab now… And he found her in the Great Hall, with
Richard Flay pointing out all those features of the room that evoked the
Italian Renaissance.
“Bad news,” Bruce whispered, paradoxically handing her
a glass of Piper-Heidsieck as if to toast the disaster, and then steering
her away from Richard, he elaborated. “First line of the riddle, it’s
a ‘pointed’ something, that could mean a sword or a dagger, ‘spawned from
greatness,’ not the sun. That comes later: a pointed weapon from
the land of the sun, the land of Ra.”
“I have bad news too,” Selina said, taking another
champagne flute from a passing waiter and handing it to him the same way.
“Once you introduce the idea that it’s not Eddie, I started thinking.
Barry Hobbs and the LexCorp boys, the blackmail fund, I called it Ba en
Aset, the soul of Isis aka Bast. I told them that’s what it
meant, I told them it was a Bast thing. And that would explain its
coming to the house. It might not have anything to do with Batman, it
could come to the house if it’s aimed at me.”
“No,” Bruce shook his head. “No I agree the
LexCorp boys will bounce back eventually, but there’s no way they got it
together that fast.”
“I cost them a lot of money, Bruce. Who’s
to say how fast they’ll regroup when—dinner rolls flown in from the Passi
bakery in Rome, do you know why?”
Bruce saw they were strolling near enough for Dwight
and Sophia Beaufort to overhear, necessitating a change of subject, but he
still had to smile at the subject Selina chose.
“Does it have something to do with our first date?” he
asked.
“Okay, there are times the detective thing is sexy and
times it’s just creepy,” she said, dropping her voice. “How in the
hell—”
“I just heard myself, our first date is something about
Rome.”
“Apparently you flew us there for a sandwich from this
little stall in the mercato. Beef brisket, four euros, gets its bread
from that bakery.”
“Well I didn’t want to be like all the other guys,”
Bruce said impishly, and Selina gave him a look. “It’s not like we can
tell anybody what really happened,” he whispered. “And it’s not a bad
story. It sounds like me, like the me I pretended…”
He trailed off as he saw Ford Dormont was watching them
talk, watching as if he knew what they were discussing. He raised his
glass very subtly, as if in a secret toast.
“Of course it’s a good story,” he muttered. And
of course it fit. If it was crafted by a writer who was in the
business of making up stories to fit a character.
There was no chance to talk further. They were
separated as Dwight Beaufort led Bruce off to meet his son’s girlfriend and
Sophia appropriated Selina to settle an argument about that darling shop
with the earrings that was either in Venice or Milan. They heard
separately how Don Eping was drinking again, how Gilda Newling—typical
arriviste—had the plane redecorated while Isaac was in rehab and how she
used Kiki Manning who does the London houses for all those Russian
oligarchs. How there was a feud with Lily White because Lily wanted
Kiki to do her dining room and Gilda had been monopolizing him for months.
How Vivian Chase tried to get Piper Turnbull as a media consultant to advise
on her husband’s release from prison, but he turned her down flat…
They met up again in the general migration to the
dining room:
“It would also explain the riddle,” Selina insisted,
picking up where she left off. She spit it out quickly, figuring they
would have little chance to talk during the meal: “Greek on Egyptian
papyrus, that’s not Eddie’s style. It’s an outsider who doesn’t know
how it works, trying to mimic and getting it wrong.”
“You’re right about that part,” he whispered as they
reached their table… “At least I certainly hope you’re right that
Nigma has nothing to do with it,” as he held her chair… “Because
there’s something more. I can’t analyze it until we get home, but
having taken a closer look in better light, it’s just possible that dark ink
is blood.”
“Ew,” Selina said, glancing at the dish of cocktail
sauce and then looking at Bruce like he’d ruined the prospect of eating
oysters.
“I want to check something,” he whispered just as
Gladys took her place next to him, ending the conversation.
The tables settled, an amuse bouche was set before her,
and Selina eyed the elegant little round of puff pastry and salmon mousse,
topped with roe and dill. She picked it up and leaned over to whisper
in Bruce’s ear as if imparting a sexy secret.
“Don’t you dare,” she warned, her lips to his ear while
the mousse blocked anyone’s view of his mouth.
“Blood and a ‘pointy something’ is definitely a
threat,” he mouthed, his hand over hers, guiding her fingers to pop the
delectable morsel into his mouth.
The table reacted with tolerant amusement, as
expected—young love and all that—and Bruce returned the gesture. First
whispering in her ear “If it is blood and it’s directed at you, a threat
that was meant to be found on our way here, I want to know now, not later…”
She smiled gamely, as if it was an equally romantic
endearment he was offering. She accepted the bite of salmon just as he
had done, and just as he had done, she mouthed the last words this gambit
would allow them to exchange. “Don’t you dare,” she repeated.
It actually seemed to work, for a while. The
amuse were cleared and the next course served. She felt the shift
midway through the soup—the Dark Knight was on the job—and when the course
was finished and the waiters began hovering to take the bowls, she felt a
spike.
“If you’ll excuse me for just one minute,” he said.
Selina spent that one minute recalling the Anderson
balcony, where she could have pushed him into the street and nobody would
have been the wiser… The next minute she worked out how he must have
studied the waiters clearing the amuse course to determine the best
psychological moment later when they came back for the soup… The next
minute she again considered the balcony, and the one after that, how bad
whatever Bruce suspected must be. That he would leave in the middle of
this dinner knowing what was at stake…
“So sorry,” he said, returning. She looked at
him, that catch of the fop in his voice said it all. It was bad.
He was overcompensating and it was bad.
She looked closer once he was seated, but could see
nothing in his eyes but Bruce Wayne the one time playboy prince of Gotham,
finally settling down. He was wholly in character, utterly committed,
not a hint of Batman. Whatever he found was bad.
Selina made it through the fish course, the game and
the sorbet on auto-pilot: the recent trip to Metropolis, the America’s Cup
and the Kents… Yes, it was the Clark Kent who wrote Strange Bedfellows
who was to be Bruce’s best man. They met through his publisher here in
Gotham… No, she didn’t think there was a collection of Wayne bridal
gowns preserved like a private museum in some forgotten room in the manor,
but she would certainly find out…
All the while her subconscious sorted through the
possibilities like polished tiles of a game she wasn’t entirely sure how to
play: If the riddle wasn’t from Eddie but sent to Bruce, it had to be
someone who knew his identity—Hugo, Ra’s, Talia or Bane—and making it seem
like a Riddler clue could be a stalling tactic, an ordinary red herring, or
an oblique shot at her because she and Eddie were friends. And if it
was a shot, it was an ambivalent passive-aggressive act which eliminated
Bane.
If she was the target, that changed everything.
Batman’s identity wasn’t a factor. It could be anyone with a
grievance. Catman had never liked her and it was said he “hadn’t been
right” since the Bane beating during the war. It’s not like any of the
rogues were normal to begin with, there was no telling what a brush with
death would do to a guy like Blake. The Riddler angle could also be an
allusion to the war, he was leader of the rogue forces against Falcone.
And the war did start—ironically—because the rogues thought she and
Bruce were engaged. If it was a grudge from the war driving all this,
their real engagement party would make an inviting target.
The sorbet arrived. Selina took advantage of the pause
in conversation and turned to Bruce, mentioning William Blake like it was
something they’d been talking about for their vows. He shook his head
and said the problem with those romantic poets was the allusions were too
murky.
And he was right. If Blake was sending a message,
he wouldn’t be half-assed about the cat angle. It wouldn’t be a
generic Egyptian scene on Papyrus with a riddle in Greek on the back, it
would be a clear allusion to Sekhmet depicted with her cat’s head on a human
body making her unmistakably a cat-woman.
Of course Catwoman was credited with ending the
rogue war, with taking out Carmine Falcone and putting down Bane. And
raiding Falcone’s fortune afterwards. Carmine had as much cause and
more time to mount his revenge than Barry Hobbs… But unless he’d
completely cracked, Carmine would never announce his intentions with a
riddle.
Of course she’d also gone “snacking” on Ra’s al Ghul’s
fortune (as Lex put it), though he had a variety of other motives to strike
at her. Ra’s was more likely than Falcone to misdirect with a riddle
as part of some needlessly convoluted scheme. But he was safely stuck
in Atlantis. As far as anyone knew, he had no way to contact the
surface…
The game arrived. It was even possible Ivy
had some misplaced associations between Selina—or Bruce and Selina as a
couple—and that awful mutation that nearly killed her. Being rid of it
wound up stripping her of her pheromones and her telepathic connection to
plants. Selina looked down uncomfortably at the fronds of fennel and
thyme served as a garnish with her pheasant. Poor Pammy, losing her
powers had been the good outcome. If it hadn’t been for
Clayface sacrificing himself, she and Selina would have been fried in
Etrigan’s hellfire.
Bruce was saying something about the Wemyss Clan from
which the Waynes descended, a family legacy and the right to spend their
honeymoon in a Scottish castle so private, it didn’t appear on maps.
Well that was a solution to the honeymoon question; she wondered when he’d
thought of it. No sending a mountain of luggage to the Gritti Palace
or imposing on J’onn to make shapeshifting appearances and eat a lot of room
service breakfasts. They could remain in town, decently disguised as
Thomas Pearl and Cora Colette, Bruce would continue to function as Batman to
satisfy the curiosity of anyone who—obnoxiously, in her view—had to see his
reaction to Catwoman getting ma…
God, that was a third possibility—the riddle
could have been left at the manor not because the sender knew Bruce was
Batman, not as a message for her, but by someone intending to use her
connection to Batman to make her deliver the riddle for them. Either
to force Selina Kyle and Batman together on the night of the party, or if
the sender were really clever, the riddle being handed over by
Catwoman being an integral a part of the clue.
Ulgh, there were too many possibilities.
Selina excused herself, planning to call Eddie in the
powder room only after she’d taken an aspirin. Her phone,
unsurprisingly, had voicemail from Bruce.
..::Trouble. It’s on the Egyptian side, not the Greek. I’m sending a
snapshot, but you probably remember there’s a block of hieroglyphics above
the figures. It’s divided into five segments. The murders this week,
the Bludgeon Killer, the locations where the bodies were found correspond
exactly to the first three blocks of hieroglyphs. The first victim was
found in a credit card consolidation office, the next at a food bank, the
last under scaffolding on a church; that’s a point for point match with
hieroglyphs about forgiveness of debt, gifts of corn, and restoration of a
temple. This was sent by the killer, and he’s got two more locations
picked out. Two more murders on deck.::..
She made her way back to the table feeling there was a
rock in her stomach. She took her seat as Bruce had done, on auto
pilot, finished the meal on auto pilot…
Yes, the Gotham Post had run the engagement story.
It was quite remarkable, the reduction in fabricated and insulting
embellishments. Apart from omitting her parents and completely
misrepresenting her education and family background, they more or less ran
the announcement submitted… Yes, they had selected a charity. She
would certainly register at Scully & Scully, but they would both prefer donations be made in
lieu of gifts, to the Thomas Wayne Trauma Center or the Victims’ Alliance…
Through the meat, then the salad… No, she hadn’t given any serious
thought to marking her era as mistress of the manor with a new china pattern
commissioned from Lenox as if she were an incoming first lady, but there was
a superb 18th century Spode service and some fin de siècle
Limoges that she might bring out for special dinner parties if they were
especially good… And finally the dessert…
Bruce suggested they take a pass and walk the room,
visiting all the other tables and chatting with those they hadn’t had a
chance to spend time with. It gave them an opening for guarded
conversation as they moved from table to table…
Of the suspects discussed: Ra’s and Talia, Hugo, Eddie
and Catman, Ra’s was definitely the most likely to run up a body count just
to get his attention.
Liv Bantry and the Colemans, the Endicotts and the
Forbes…
But Ra’s did not have access to news from the surface,
he shouldn’t know about the engagement (unless Arthur told him, and why
would he?) let alone specifics of the party, and he had no means to
contact the surface. All that was confirmed when Bruce went to see him
in Atlantis to feel out if Ra’s could be behind the rogues’ collective
assumption that the Pelacci mob wedding was really Bruce and Selina—
“Dear God,” Bruce breathed.
Chet and Dodo Lassiter, Winkie and Clayton Pierce…
They all knew more about this preposterous date in Rome than Bruce
did, who supposedly contrived it. Another time he would be annoyed,
but tonight…
“What’s wrong?” Selina asked as soon as they were free.
“Dessouk,” he whispered. “When I went to see Ra’s
in Atlantis, I tested him about getting news from the surface. I told
him a ridiculous story about a Justice League battle destroying the town he
was born in, and he corrected me about the town but clearly had no idea the
whole story about the battle was a lie. The town I used for the lie was
Dessouk.”
“And?”
Penny Vraag and Charles Tremont, Bunny Wigglesworth and
Clive, Chester and Matilda Markel…
“The word I couldn’t identify, Desoúgk or Desoúnk,”
Bruce resumed. “It could be Dessouk, an ancient name or a variant
spelling. The town is in Egypt, just east of Alexandria, plenty of
Greek on the monuments.”
“So this whole thing could be a message, putting you on
notice that he’s in contact with the surface now?”
“Possibly. The murders aren’t out of character
but why dress it up as a riddle?”
Ted Layne and Gerald Grimes, Clive and Adrienne
Littleton…
They returned to their table just as the orchestra set
up and the tables started to break up for general mingling and dancing.
As the guests of honor, Bruce and Selina’s situation didn’t improve.
They were in demand for conversation, and though they did finally get the
details on this first date they’d had in Rome, they still had to steal
moments here and there to exchange a few words that weren't in code.
Bruce went off to research Dessouk on the Internet, and
when he returned, Selina’s brow was knit.
“I know the detective brain is tied up with stuff that
actually matters, but if you get a chance while we’re mingling, see if you
can find out my position on The Gotham Post.”
“Repeat,” Bruce said in the tone Batman used to
challenge her banter mid-break-in.
“I was cornered with Bunny Wigglesworth and Ormolu.
‘Dashiell Tate slept with the nanny’ and so on, when Ford Dormont comes up to
us and launches into this story about you and Harvey in his Dentmeister
days. It’s weird, I’ve heard Harvey’s side of it more than once and
Ford’s version is spot on. In between that, Dashiell sleeping with the
nanny and Don Eping losing a million dollars at this high stakes
poker game in London, Bunny asked if I’ve forgiven the Post now that they’re
giving me good press on the engagement. And I honestly don’t know what
I told her.”
“Selina—”
“Bruce, I’ve got a head full of dead bodies in my
voicemail and a riddle that’s not from Eddie in Greek, pointed weapons
spawned from Ra’s. Give me a break, words came out of my mouth, I
don’t know what they were.”
“If I get any indication what your position is on the
Post, I will let you know,” Bruce said like a man who knows his way around
feline logic.
She looked up at him like she felt bad—a rare
occurrence. She knew none of this was important with a killer on the
loose and a riddle they couldn’t investigate until they were free of the
social quagmire, but still, it was the exact angle she’d always looked up
with such infuriatingly carefree defiance as Catwoman, when she was actually
committing a crime.
“Let’s dance,” he said and led her to the south end of
the ballroom.
Warm bodies merged as they always had, hyper-reactive
to the slightest shift in balance, adapting to the other’s rhythm.
Selina’s lips moved to Bruce’s ear, a hair's breadth of contact, achingly
light, achingly fleeting, and then the hot breath of a whisper:
“Tell me about the bludgeon killer.”
Bruce’s lead spun her abruptly and awkwardly. He
stopped for a beat, looking at the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and the
radically different view of Robinson Park now that it was dark.
“Bruce,” Selina prompted, and he resumed dancing,
turning them so that she faced the windows while he saw the same view
reflected in the mirrors opposite.
“A pointed instrument,” he said. “The bludgeon
killer does not use a pointed weapon; he bludgeons. The riddle isn’t
referencing a weapon, but a tool. A pointed tool, a pointed
instrument. Do you know what ‘pointed instrument’ is in Greek?”
“Obelisk,” Selina said, looking out at the dark
silhouette of the Robinson Park obelisk blacked out against the city lights
behind it. The obelisk called:
“Cleopatra’s Needle,” they said together. Then
Bruce went on, “Cleopatra wasn’t Egyptian; she was Greek, right?”
“More than Greek, she was descended from Alexander the
Great,” Selina said. “Spawned from greatness, you might say.”
They hurriedly left the dance floor, waving heedlessly at Bunny
Wigglesworth and Kay Kay Finn as they passed, a pair of foppish smiles for
Clive Littleton (Bruce mentioning how it was too bad about Dashiel Tate
getting caught with the nanny) and Winkie Pierce (Don drinking
again, so sad, it wasn’t the poker losses you know, it was that woman!)
They squished together in a phone booth off the Great
Hall, and read over each other as they skimmed the history of Cleopatra’s
Needle on the Robinson Park website.
“The obelisk came from—was shipped to—Gotham from
Heliopolis,” Selina read.
“Literally the city of the sun,” Bruce said, while she
said “or city of Ra—”
“In later Egyptian dynastic times, Ra
was merged with the god Horus, as Ra-Horakhty—oh who cares!” Bruce
exclaimed.
“‘Ra, who is Horus of the Two
Horizons’ might care very much if Harvey doesn’t surface. Nobody
has seen him since the whole Ivy-Etrigan-Clayface thing went sideways—in
Robinson Park—and it’s not like it’d be the first time a rogue decided to
wreak bloody vengeance on somebody who wasn’t strictly to blame for whatever
they’re mad about.”
“Breathe,” Bruce suggested when the
torrent of words subsided. “We’ve got a pointed thing descended from
greatness and from the land of the sun. Ra-Horus and the two horizons
don’t figure into it. ‘Limestone pedestals and bronze crabs were added
to each corner,’ couldn’t matter less. Ah, here we are—transported to
Gotham via a wooden cargo ship called the
Dessouk. This is it. This is the solution to the riddle,
it’s Cleopatra’s Needle.”
They looked at each other.
“Okay, now what?” Selina asked.
“’Knock, knock.’ ‘Who’s there?’ ‘Cleopatra’s Needle.’ We still don’t
know what it means, or why it’s in riddle form or even which of us it came
to.”
“No, we don’t,” Bruce admitted.
“We better get back. Maybe you could…” He pointed to his neck, and
Selina obliged with a discreet lipstick smudge on his collar.
They rejoined the party. Bruce
got a duty-dance with Gladys out of the way while Randolph sat Selina down
for “a nice chat,” which was spent probing for every conceivable detail
about the night Luthor’s hedge fund imploded. She stole periodic looks
out the window while Bruce did the same from the dance floor.
When he finished with Gladys, Bruce
asked her to dance again. Selina thought maybe something had occurred
to him, but he said nothing. Through half a medley of Cole Porter love
songs, he said nothing.
“Get anything?” she asked finally.
“No.”
“So talk to me. Three bodies
in, you’ve got to have something on this guy.”
“He obliterates their identities.
Faces smashed beyond recognition, teeth are pulverized, some kind of
chemical process on the fingers. And he’s lucky: DNA came back
inconclusive on the first two vics. The last chance is forensic facial
reconstruction on the skulls and that’s another two to four weeks minimum.”
“And what does that mean? Why
does he take away their identities?”
“It was necessary to hide who they
were,” Bruce said grimly. “Either because there’s a link, because
knowing who the victims are will point us to the killer, or because he’s
crazy, his particular pathology is focused on removing these people’s
identities. It’s even possible that’s his aim and the murders are just
a necessary first step to accomplish his goal.”
“Sad state of affairs when Ra’s
offing people to get your attention was the good alternative,” Selina
muttered. “What about tonight’s body, the one that—”
“The one that disappeared from the
morgue,” Bruce said, pivoting, a new energy in his lead as he mind raced to
incorporate the new data: the riddle, Cleopatra’s Needle, and the
ramifications of that third body being taken from the morgue. “Damn it
to hell,” he graveled, turning Selina and walking her deliberately to the
farthest corner of the room. “Dormont is stalking us,” he announced,
though by now Selina could see him crossing the dance floor with a
determined gate.
“We are all enchanted by spectacle of
young love,” Ford Dormont announced in that annoying sing-song. “But
you must share each other a little.”
He stood there clearly expecting to
cut in, and Bruce looked at Selina with more regret than when he’d
threatened her with Blackgate.
“Yes, by all means, share me,” she
said (with less teasing affection than when he’d threatened her with
Blackgate).
Ford moved in and clutched her back
like a figure from those 1950s dance movies, and Bruce remembered there was
some Hollywood in his distant past before he became a writer. He was a
producer or something, on paper at least. Not important in his own
right, but he flew pretty high in the people he partied with.
With the acid thought that that’s
probably where he picked up the namedropping, Bruce dismissed Dormont from
his mind and went back to the phone booths as the orchestra began an upbeat
Rodgers and Hammerstein medley with a peppy rendition of When You’re
Driving Through The Moonlight. He returned looking grim, saw Ford
subjecting Selina to his energetic rumba box step, and scanned the room with
Batman’s strategic acumen. He selected Liv Bantree as the doyenne Ford
would be unable to resist, dusted off his playboy charm and gave Liv a full
blast to get her onto the dance floor as quickly as possible. He
rumba’d her into position next to Ford and Selina, and retrieved his bride
with the swift, unassailable stage management he would have used to separate
her from civilians if she’d infiltrated the party to escape Batman after a
robbery. He led her first to a courtyard where, unfortunately,
Randolph Larraby was smoking, then hustled her back inside and up the stairs
to a private room where—after he picked the lock—they could look down into
the courtyard to see when Randolph had left.
“I called Gordon,” he reported grimly
when they were alone. “He confirmed two things. They never got a
chance to take samples from the third body before it went missing. No
samples and no measurements, so not only is the skull gone, there’s no
possibility for a reconstruction.”
“’Confirmed’ meaning that’s what you
expected,” Selina said, and Bruce nodded. “So the first two bodies the
killer covered his tracks, but he messed up on the third and had to take the
body before you could get an ID?”
This time Bruce shook his head no.
“Gordon also confirmed the attempt to
match DNA on the first two bodies came back inconclusive/no match. But
the thing is when I said that earlier, when he said it, when the officer
told him, we were all repeating what someone told us. ‘The results
were inconclusive.’ I had him call the morgue and have the night crew
pull the actual piece of paper with the lab results and read it. It
says inconclusive, yes, it's exactly the same boilerplate report of an
inconclusive/no match result, exactly the same on both like they were
printed off the same template, same computer and printer one right after the
other, consecutive case numbers though they were submitted four days apart.”
“So the killer’s got a man in the
coroner’s office?” Selina murmured, chasing the idea. “Covering for
samples they never took, and disappearing the final body?”
“No, not quite,” Bruce said, glancing
out the window and down into the courtyard where Randolph had finished his
cigarette. “The body wasn’t taken from the morgue, it just got up and
was reabsorbed into the clay mass it came from. Can you make it over
that gate from this window?”
“Did you just say—uh, I can but the
dress might get torn up, are we coming back?—Did you just say Matt is alive?
Bruce, did you just say Matt Hagen is still alive, because he didn’t deserve
to go out that way. I mean, he saved me, he saved Pammy. He took
that full blast of Etrigan’s fireball and then you crashed into him, it was
broken pottery everywhere and that dust—in my eyelashes, and coughing on
it—”
“And Cleopatra’s Needle isn’t that
far from where it happened. It’s about half way between the clearing
where Ivy made her last stand and the art museum on the edge of the park.
The art museum with all those Basts and Sekhmets. Selina, this isn’t
good news. When I was at the morgue, there were signs that could point
to a fire alarm going off earlier today. If the body got wet, Clayface
lost his connection, maybe it was too damaged to ‘repair’ so he just
absorbed it back into his lab employee and walked out the door.”
“Bruce, we thought we had three dead
bodies and a dead Clayface, now we have none. This is totally good
news.”
“There were three dead bodies and
five locations left by a supposed killer, and a clue positioned midway
between representations of you and Ivy. And Hagan has a history of
blaming women he considers responsible for his plight. I need to get
to Ivy now, and you have to come with me because I’m not letting you out of
my sight.”
Selina looked out the window, at the
wrought iron gate surrounding the courtyard and the sidewalk beyond.
She reluctantly took off her shoes as she muttered “I am going along with
this because I don’t, off the top of my head, have a better plan. But
I’m going on record saying this is not Metropolis. It’s Gotham, you’re
Bruce Wayne, and this is actually a party for us. People are going to
notice we’ve gone and it’s on you to figure out how we explain.”
“Agreed, I may have an idea that—”
“That better not include our having
to come back tonight, because I can’t guarantee the dress will survive
this,” Selina said, positioned on the window ledge. She leapt,
grabbing a gilded urn on top of a gatepost but snagging fabric on a jagged
bit of filigree as she vaulted over. She rolled and ran expertly to
disperse the shock of the landing, completing the tear up the side of her
gown all the way past her thigh to the hip.
Bruce had followed her trajectory and
ran past her, indicating the way to the Batmobile he’d summoned.
Nothing more was said until they were suited up, the car speeding to a
convent on 64th Street that acted as halfway housing for the University
Medical Annex.
It was Catwoman who finally spoke,
not from a burning desire to defend Clayface but merely to break the
silence.
“For the record, it’s one woman,
singular, that he blames for ruining his life and making him Clayface
because she is personally responsible for ruining his life and making
him Clayface. It’s not like he’s irrationally pointing fingers at half
the planet because we have girl parts. He blames one person who
actually did it and happens to be a woman.”
“Your point?”
“I don’t know. Maybe just that…
if Matt is pissed, I don’t think I get to hide behind my tits. I
dragged him into that situation, it was my brilliant plan, I whispered
‘hero’ in his ear, and then he goes and hurls himself into fire.
Literally into a sustained stream of hellfire.”
“Selina, we’ve all made choices that
didn’t turn out like we intended—”
“I had clumps of him in my eyelashes,
Bruce. That clay-dust-stuff was everywhere. I was
coughing it. I still have nightmares… He was a nice guy.
And I could taste him. I had clumps of him in my eyelashes.”
Batman reached over and took her
gloved hand in his.
“You’ve been holding on to that too
long,” he said. “And we’ll talk it through later. Right now,
you’ve got to clear your head and do what’s needed. Save her, and keep
yourself in one piece.”
“Yes, dear.”
A convent wouldn’t have been Pamela’s first choice for
living quarters, but it was less than a block from the
University Medical Annex where she still had to present herself twice
a week for check-ins and booster shots. It might not be ideal for
getting on with her life in this awful state without pheromones, but she did
have a life to get on with. Until she could be sure the
treatments that reversed the catastrophic rift in her
herbaceous-sympathetic metabolism were stable, she didn’t dare run
off and discontinue treatment. Much as she wanted her powers back,
determined as she was to get her powers back and to do it sooner
rather than later, there was no point even trying if she wouldn’t be able to
breathe.
It had been a dreary evening, another one. There
was nothing to prevent her going out. The first week after her release
from the hospital she’d done nothing else. The novelty, having a
normal skin tone again, walking the streets like anyone else, going to the
bank and the drug store and the deli, safely anonymous. She had even
gone into a florist! (Though the experience made her cry and she hadn’t
gone back.) And she could wear anything, no planning ahead if she
wanted to accentuate the green, play it down or cover it entirely. It
was a novelty, it was liberating… at first. Then she thought about the
Iceberg.
Her de-powered state wasn’t common knowledge, but it
wasn’t Batman’s identity secret either. She was at the convent because
a court-appointed Special Master ruled “placing her among those she had
victimized visibly stripped of her meta abilities denotes a foreseeable and
preventable danger” and Arkham refused to accept the responsibility.
Pamela wasn’t sure if Jonathan Crane, Edward Nigma and others she’d greened
would be out for revenge, but she wanted to at least get Harley’s opinion
before she took the plunge. She might also hedge her bets going
with Harley, which would absolutely defuse any such threats from anyone
but Joker.
If she could bring herself to speak to
Harley, that is, which was very much in doubt. It was six days since
Pamela learned Harley was being released from Arkham. It had been six
days since she’d gone out for more than the walk to the hospital for her
booster. Six days since she’d had any appetite. Six nights since
she’d done more than skim the news and play Plants vs Zombies on the
convent’s surprisingly robust wi-fi. She had nine days until Harley
would be released. Nine days to figure out what she was going to do,
how she felt about this. Harley that stupid, wonderful, deplorable,
enraging, despicable, detestable, impossible, unforgivable,
beautiful, horrible, magnificent, doomed idiot. She’d gone back to
Joker. Why? Was there any point even asking anymore? She
went back to Joker. Because she’s Harley, that’s why. She would
always go back. She was made by him, for him, and she would always
fucking go back! He’d cut her wrists. Why? Was there any
point even asking anymore? He was Joker, that’s why. He wanted
to buy time and saving her gave Superman something to do!
Harvey was gone. No surprise there. She
couldn’t even say ‘men are undependable,’ she didn’t have that satisfaction
after Harley had let her down so disgracefully. Harley had no excuse
but Harvey was gone because Ivy herself had broken him. He was gone
because she’d seen his soft spot with the intimate knowledge of a lover and
she’d banged away at it until he broke.
So she’d faced it alone. This whole ordeal
wrenching the ability to breathe again from her failing body—at the cost of
everything that defined her as Poison Ivy—and she’d faced the nightmarish
ordeal alone. Her one visitor, it was unbelievable, her one visitor
the entire time was Bruce Wayne. She got up from the little desk and
went to her nightstand, patted the slim volume that lay there. “It’s
about a tree,” he’d said.
Simple oaf. A man she’d greened, extorted,
greened again, a man whose clothes she’d caused to attack him, had
come to see her in the hospital and brought her a book about a tree.
It was quite ridiculously sweet. She opened the back cover and
consulted the notes she kept in the back, notes that had nothing to do with
the Bodhi Tree on the bank of the River Naerunchara, when there was a knock
at the door.
Sister Lucille, probably. Because she’d stayed in
again, an invitation to the common room to watch television. Or Sister
Karen, with a complaint about draining the wi-fi.
“Come in,” Pamela called, and the door opened. It
was shriveled Sister Dorothy—for a moment—and then as the frail woman who
had to be over ninety stepped through the doorway, she grew and her body
swelled, yellowing and darkening until a hulking, dripping mass of black and
brownish slime towered over her, bending its… call it a head, to keep from
bumping into the low ceiling.
“Ivy, hiding out in a convent. What’s next, Adam
Sandler playing Hamlet at the RSC? You lectured the brides of Jesus on
all your pagan goddesses yet?”
Most of the body shrunk suddenly, so the arm that
remained—shaped like a giant mallet that might be used to slaughter a wooly
mammoth—could swing freely in the tiny room. It came at her head,
turning Ivy’s “Matt” into a shrieking scream as she sprang away—and checked
herself into the wall with a thud.
“GAIA!” Clayface bellowed. “Pantheon: Olympian.
Sphere of influence: fertility and protection!”
He swung again, thinking her trapped against the wall,
a vicious downward blow made to beat her into the floor. This time the
articulated syllable was “Clay” before it turned into a scream, and she
threw herself at the bed, took a step up the wall by the headboard and
twisted to the far side of the room. She was farther from the window
but slightly closer to the door. She looked frantically from the door
to Clayface and back to the door, trying to force an angle to make it work.
“M-Matt-Claymatt, you, you saved me-us-me-and-Catty-us,
th-thank—AIEYOLNO!” she managed, rushing hopelessly for the door only to see
Sisters Karen and Mary Katherine coming towards it before it slammed shut,
splintering in the force of a mud mountain.
“Your fault,” Clayface hissed. “Nerthus.
Pantheon: Norse. Earth Goddess said to have traveled through Denmark in a
wagon. Earth Mother that rules over Midgard; associated with
witchcraft, wealth, and purification.”
Again the mallet hand swung, and again Pamela screamed.
“Mankind has always been indebted to those godly women
touched by the blessed life force of Mother Earth,” Clayface snarled.
“Without whose munificence no blossom, sheaf, or blade of grass could grow.”
Swing. Scream. Snarl.
“Now you must see how unnatural it is to resist this
simple request. Tell me, Batman, would dehydrating the Walking Dung
Heap be possible?”
Swing. Scream.
“I can explain!” she yelped. “It was such a long
time ago, we’ve come so far. You helped me, helped SelYEEAAIE—”
“STOP SQUIRMING!” Clayface roared. “I’m not gonna
kill you.”
His left arm came out of nowhere, punching with an only
slightly oversized fist, delivering an upper cut that bounced her head into
the wall.
“Oh that hurt,” she said through clenched teeth while
the mud mountain closed in around her.
“That’d be too quick. I just want to slow you
down—” The mallet hand hit the wall above her head, cracking the plaster and
then oozing down onto her head “—so we can do this right.”
The menace in the final words revealed the masterful
actor Matt Hagen had been, to convey so much intent, not just the
hatred but the determined intention to act on it that it chilled the blood.
For a full second, Pamela couldn’t move, then the spell of that soul-searing
voice shattered in the weight of mud slime dripping down her face, the ooze
pressing into her body pinning her neck and shoulders to the wall, and the
icy realization that she was about to die.
Her fingers drove themselves into the… call it a
forehead, digging—as best they could in slimy mud—digging into a gelatinous
mass that became wetter and less solid the deeper she dug. Straining
to pull his face apart even as it lost the solidity to make the effort
worthwhile. Her face was completely covered in sludge now, smothering
her last attempt to scream in a disgusting mass of Hagen-mud.
Her head started to spin, the arms digging into
Hagen-face were heavy, and something oppressively silent was enveloping her
when… suddenly, very far away through that force field of silence, she heard
a cry. A cry that was… not her. Hagenot…her.
Hagen. Not her. Hagen. Screaming.
Air. Air was good.
Very cold air. Nothing over her face and… what
was going on?
She was looking at Hagen’s back, Batman was in the
room—Hagen was facing Batman who’d apparently come through the window and…
and Catty who’d come in the door. Batman was punching
Clayface—he had new gloves with weird spurts of water coming out of them on
each hit and—wow!—that knocked a chunk of clay sludge out of Hagen with
every hit. Ha!
“Pammy!” Catwoman called, and tossed her—what was this
thing? Seltzer. She pointed it at Hagen and fired a spray of
liquid into his back. He twisted at the waist a full 180 and roared at
her, but before he could do more Catty drew his fire with… Well I’ll be
damned, Pamela thought …some kind of water attachments on her claws like
Batman had on his gauntlets.
Hagen tore into her with more venom than he had
responded to Batman.
“The other whore,” he snarled, hoisting her up and
shoving her into the wall the same way he had Pam, except in Catty’s case
he’d had to lift her above the desk. “You should have waited your
turn, C.W. I was coming for you next.” It looked worse than what
he’d done to Pam, but it did leave her legs in a position to kick him in the
head.
“Ivy!” Batman called, and he tossed her a cylinder the
size of a flashlight. As before she aimed at Hagen’s back, pressed the
only button, and it shot out some kind of water balloon. This time he
didn’t turn but merely shot out his arm to swat at her. She dodged and
fired again, fired again, and then he turned and swatted her hard, knocking
her into the wall and the balloon launcher to the floor. This time
Batman pulled his attention, and it continued like that for several rounds.
Hagen fought Batman until Catwoman tossed Pam a weapon to distract him.
When he came for her, Catwoman pulled his focus and he fought her until
Batman tossed Pam a weapon. They were also scattering white
crystals—probably salt—whenever they weren’t fighting, until Hagen was
inside a ring of the stuff, with huge chunks of his lower clay sprinkled
with it.
“Now!” Batman called.
He held up what looked like a flare. Catty
actually ran up a piece of Clayface to get her flare close to the
ceiling—and to the smoke detector as a loud pop sounded beyond the door.
A chorus of fire alarms went off, and the sprinkler over the door kicked in.
The white crystals erupted into little puffs of white smoke.
“Heavily ionized superconductive hydroxyl vapor,”
Batman announced as Hagen’s upper body started to lose structure while the
lower portions lightened to a pale yellow. “Go while you can.
Because once it dries, it won’t move for days.”
Pamela watched as most of the Hagen glop
congealed into a central… shape, more a spherical candle than a body…
A semi-spherical candle balanced precariously and off-center on a
semi-columnar candle which had both burned unevenly. It heaved and
lunged at the window and finally poured itself out, all the while saying
something unintelligible in a gargling parody of Hagen’s voice as if he were
under water, but resolving in five syllables of frightening clarity: “This…
isn’t… over.”
Pamela stared at the window, stared transfixed for a
count of three, then she looked at Batman, then at Catwoman, then at the
window again.
“That went well,” she remarked.
Bat and Cat looked at each other. She might be in
shock. Or she could be referring to the three-sided portion of the
battle where they had fought well together, considering how they were all
more accustomed to fighting each other. But probably she was in shock.
“Thank you,” she added.
Definitely in shock.
“Catty, awfully nice of you to come out tonight.
You’re supposed to be at an engagement party, aren’t you? Didn’t I see
something in the paper.”
Yeah, she was definitely in shock.
Then suddenly she wasn’t. She went to the
shattered window, looked down at the grass below, picked up a shard of glass
with a glop of clay on it and nodded with satisfaction.
“I will not be sleeping in this room,” she declared
regally.
Then she looked from Batman to Catwoman with a
business-like air, and then with a disapproving one. From one to the
other, Bat then Cat…
“Excuse me,” to Batman, a deliberate, contemptuous turn
of the shoulder as she passed. And then sotto voce to Catwoman, “Could
I have a word.” Tapping Selina’s elbow and steering her to the far
edge of the room by the door she said “So what are you doing with him?
Isn’t the engagement party tonight? That’s what I saw in the Times.”
Put off for only a half-beat, Selina opted for the
truth (more or less). “He came and got me. He was working on
a murder, some clue led to the conclusion that Clayface was back and going
to come after us, you and me, because of what happened that night in the
park. I didn’t believe it at first, but…” she gestured around the
trashed room coated in salt and slime.
“Oh, yes, I see,” Pam nodded. “So he’s not making
trouble for you and Bruce, because if he is, I’ll take care of him for you.
Why I’ll…” she trailed off, realizing she was talking about abilities she no
longer had. Rather than rub salt, Selina patted her hand. “I got
it, I can handle Batman, really.”
“Good. You’ve got gold there, Bruce I mean.
Did you know about the lovely book he gave me?”
She returned to the nightstand, offering Batman a curt
“You can go” as she passed. Selina started to say “He’s kind of my
ride,” but Batman was crawling out the window, presumably to meet her
outside.
Pam patted the book dry and flicked off bits of clay,
then showed Selina the precious volume titled Bodhi. She gushed,
positively gushed explaining it was about a tree—actually told from the
tree’s point of view—on the banks of the river where Buddha came to
meditate. Selina promised she would tell Bruce how much she enjoyed
it, and Pam hugged her impulsively. Selina left, confused.
“Nice one on the book,” she mentioned when she reached
the Batmobile.
The Batmobile made its silent, menacing way up 60th.
It passed Hudson-Kane where Lise and Lili had recovered from Poison Ivy’s
attack on the Queen of the Night audience, passed a department store, passed
the courtyard where Bruce and Selina made their escape from the Butterfield,
passed the formal entrance and made the turn onto Fifth Avenue where it
might or might not be seen by all those revelers still dancing before that
row of floor-to-ceiling windows reflected in the wall of mirrors.
It disappeared past the park, and a minute later Bruce
and Selina walked from that direction: her dress torn and splashed with mud,
one shoe heel broken, favoring her ankle. Bruce was solicitous,
helping her but also cradling his knuckles whenever possible. They
reached the front gate and hobbled inside, making apologies. They’d
only come back to let everyone know what happened, so there wouldn’t be any
worry, and say goodni—
Goodnights were vetoed as they were hustled into the
main bar, sat in front of the fireplace and brought brandy to calm their
nerves. The story came out, of course it was too trying to go into
much detail, but apparently Batman was investigating something unsavory and
in the midst of it, he unearthed a threat to poor Selina. He came here
(Yes, apparently he had been right here in the Butterfield) to
spirit her off to some, what do they call it, protective custody.
Bruce “went along” (and there was no doubt now who he had punched, for
everyone remembered the dinner party the night of the Wayne Gala, when
Batman burst in to question Selina about the cat burglar and Bruce threw him
out. He wouldn’t stand idly by while the Dark Knight took her away
from her own engagement party to go with him to some safe house alone…)
Details on exactly what happened at the safe house were
not forthcoming. Clearly it hadn’t been that safe. Clearly the
protective part of that protective custody wasn’t. Imaginations
ran rampant, but good breeding forbade asking point blank. After
twenty minutes or so, the couple departed in a chorus of well-wishing and
promises to call or look in on them, not tomorrow of course, they must rest
up after such an ordeal, but the next day or the day after…
In fact most of the guests were glad to see them go,
for now all those guessed-at details could be discussed openly. The
whos, the hows, the whys… All but one joined in, standing apart from the
rest, his face a mask as he watched and listened, unnoticed. Bruce and
Selina took the side door from the main bar, turned the corner into the
foyer and collected their coats… Ford Dormont
stood on the east side of the double staircase at the end of the Great
Hall, watching them go. Silhouetted against opalescent stained glass,
stolid and impassive as they climbed into the car,
as their driver shut the door, as he walked around to his own door and got in.
And
then, evanescent and barely perceptible as the car pulled away… a smile.
© 2018