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Post by Nalkarj on Nov 1, 2018 1:41:17 GMT
I: Batman
Gordon was on the roof, staring up at the sky again. He knew he had to be crazy to be doing this, to be waiting for a lunatic that he could pit against other lunatics, like (dragging in clichés, he knew) fire against fire. Honestly, though, how the hell could you fight with fire? Stupid metaphor. He could use a fire right now—a fire in the hearth, at home with Barbara and the baby. Jim Gordon was a new father, and here he was, alone, in the middle of the night, on a rooftop, having lit a beacon for a man who got his kicks dressing as a flying rodent. God damn it all.
The Bat didn’t take long to show up. Like a twisted Santa Claus, there was a twinkling heard on the roof, and then he was there, in front of the beacon. Gordon didn’t know why the Bat did this, other than… Well, other than he really was insane, maybe. Maybe? The costume, the gadgets, the guttural voice? Would he snap one day and join the other lunatics in Gotham—the guy in the clown costume, maybe? Who knew? Always best to tread carefully.
“Captain?”
Capt. Gordon could never get used to it when the Bat spoke; it was as if one of the Wayne Tower stone gargoyles suddenly started speaking to you. And he could never see the eyes; that was the worst part. You can usually tell about a person from the eyes, but the Bat’s eyes were too deep behind the mask, and it was always too dark.
“Captain—the signal?”
Like Lurch from The Addams Family—“you rang?”
“Yeah,” said Jim Gordon, rubbing his hands together to keep warm (the Bat never seemed to get cold). “Wherever you—you’re from, you get the news, right? The local news, the Gazette or Channel 9 or…”
“Yes.”
Heh. Even the guy dressed as a giant bat watches the news.
“So you know about the homicides up along the riverfront, where…”
“Yes.” A pause, as usual. “I thought the police had a suspect.”
Gordon laughed at this. “I wish. We’re supposed to, of course, with the commissioner breathing down our necks and the mayor breathing down his—we’re supposed to, because now everybody up there is afraid to leave their homes.”
“So you told the news you had someone.”
“The Commissioner did. Allay fear—hell, he’s more worried about getting the snobs in Downtown worried than he’s worried about protecting anyone up in Lemmars or Farrow or Granton or…”
“Yes.” The monosyllable again. “But the SCU…”
“Shit,” said Gordon. “They going nuttier than the crackpots in Arkham—so Loeb transferred the assignment over to me. Because they haven’t… There’s something else Loeb didn’t tell the press. I’m not supposed to tell you this, I bet, but if you’re going to help with it, then you should probably know.”
It was cold, that night, colder than it had been in Gotham for some time. Jim Gordon thought the chill was almost foreboding of something, anything, to come. He was right, and he knew he would be right the moment he leaned in and told the Bat everything he knew:
“This guy uptown—he doesn’t just kill ’em, slit their throats. He cuts ’em open, takes the bones and guts away with him. He filets ’em, like fish.”
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Post by Nalkarj on Nov 1, 2018 2:41:52 GMT
II: Batman
The word “Gotham” is, as the Post breathlessly, and the Gazette eventually, proclaimed, taken from a Nottinghamshire village that folklore tells us was populated by fools. Washington Irving first used it to refer to New York, and when antebellum settlers went west they inspiredly founded their own gotham—fool-related etymology almost certainly unknown.
But perhaps it was apropos for Gotham and, perhaps, any other major city—for man, particularly urbanized, sophisticated, enlightened man, is reduced to a gibbering fool, reduced to primality and foolishness, when terror strikes like a bolt from the blue. A great and mighty group of fools who found one particular form of madness and called it sanity, but ready to find another kind when sanity is threatened. The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
He was called the Gotham Gutter by the press, both for the alliteration and the suggestion of having come from the dregs of the city. And he was an Uptown problem at first—Uptown, all Crime Alley and Crown Point and Lemmars’ Park—and, after all, who cared about Uptown? Crime-ridden, decaying like a putrid corpse, far from the twinkling lights of the Diamond District and the watchful eye of City Hall. An Uptown problem, then, attacking Uptowners, gutting them and making away with the entrails. They thought that was his only prejudice, but no—he quickly moved on to Midtown and Downtown, and “selection by caprice” reigned.
The facts, as Captain James Gordon told Batman that night, were these.
The first victim was Angela Milling. She was eight years old, of Hawkhill. Her mother had sent her around the corner to the pharmacy; Mrs. Milling had even watched as Angela rounded the corner. Yet, somewhere between the curb and the pharmacy, death had struck. He must have moved quickly; no one heard a scream; and like a latter-day Jack the Ripper he went to work. They found what remained of her under the streetlamp. The guts had been removed. She was the first victim. Her mother had screamed when she was told—screamed like a wounded animal, Gordon said, pulling up his jacket-collar against the chill. Batman said nothing, but he was breathing a little bit more heavily now—Gordon noticed.
The second victim was John Rawletey. He was not so much a bum as a drifter, who would do odd jobs when he could find them. Also from Hawkhill, wandering its streets. A junkie who’d been accepted into drug-rehab program after program, and returned to the streets and the dealers once more. He could not be any more different than Angela Milling: she was black, he was white, she was female, he was male, she was an innocent, a kid, he—he was not. He had stumbled into a bar on West 215th, right near the river, but the barkeep threw him out—the last time anyone saw him. What was left of his body was found across from the streetlight, on 210th. Police knew the killer had to be the same, from the method, and the location of the body at the street-corner. Too fast for a copycat, not enough notoriety, not yet, but on this one the press took notice.
“But we’ve got a clue,” said James Gordon, and he snickered. “A goddam perfect clue, if you can figure out what the hell it means. Too perfect.”
It was a book, an ordinary, old, dusty brown book—a free-verse poetry collection. It had apparently been stolen from the the main branch of the Gotham Public Library, near Gainsly Park. It was leather-bound and had no title on the cover. It had been dusted for fingerprints and checked for DNA, to no avail. Inside was poetry as written in a madhouse.
The term “ravings” did the lines no justice. There was sense to them, in a way, as there was sense in Wonderland: the laws were mad, yes, but somehow very logical.
“Left at the scene. Away from the bloodshed, because this lunatic wants us to find it. Wants us to track him down. I don’t get it. This city, this city turns people nuts. I mean…”
“Yes.” Batman held the book at arm’s length. “May I take this?”
“Yeah.” Gordon pulled out a cigarette from a pack in his pocket and lit it. “Find him. Just—I heard that mom’s scream when I told her about her kid. I’ve got a kid at home. Find this son of a bitch.”
The Bat said nothing, he simply nodded. And he was gone.
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Post by Nalkarj on Nov 1, 2018 3:15:44 GMT
III: Bruce Wayne
I am insane, I guess. I have to be, to do this every night. Well? I can see the look in Gordon’s eyes when he lights that signal he’s got up on the roof, and I arrive dressed as a giant bat. He’s a good man, Gordon—straightforward, stolid, the kind of guy this city should have as its hero, not me. You’d probably think I’m vaguely comical too. But I have to. I have to do this, all of it. The realization came to me, again, not long before Gordon handed me the book that night, that second Saturday of October. I was on the top of the Cathedral—like Quasimodo. That’s apt. And I overlooked Gotham, in all its squalor, all its rank injustice, all its dazzling city-lights and putrid city-slums. There was something in me that was on high alert, as if I knew—I knew then—I would not break my oath. I couldn’t. And the kinds of people who had killed them, who had killed so many more—those people are hearing of the freak who dresses as a Bat, and are running scared.
Not that Gordon wasn’t right about the lunatics who’d popped out of the woodwork when I came on to the scene. I seem to attract them, like moths to the flame. Great. The clown, of course. This guy Crane, this former shrink there who’d gone insane himself—he’d tried to escape but hadn’t made it far before I tracked him down, and there was now this guy right next to him, who goes by the name “Nygma”—it’s an alias, of course, but the police have not been able to figure out who he is. Maybe that’s not right. Maybe he is Nygma, just as much as I’m “Batman.” We become the masks we wear. That’s appropriate for October, for Hallowe’en.
I had to get home, if you consider caverns any kind of a home. The car swept through the streets, then out to city-limits. My father’s home above, mine below. It would always be that way, I knew, I knew, I…
“Sir?”
Alfred, waiting up for me like a parent, even in the caves. Naturally.
“Sir, I know you’re very busy at the moment, but I must inform you that—”
“It can wait till morning, Alfred. Right now—look at this.”
He coughed. Alfred is so Jeeves-like that when he coughs you know something has to be up. “OK, Alfred. What is it?”
“A young lady, sir.”
“What?”
“A lady. Who is young. Sir. A very attractive young lady, if I may say so, and she has been waiting in the reception room for well on two hours.”
“Damn it, Alfred, there’s some serial killer on the loose and you told some girl to… OK. I’ve got to get rid of her. What does she want? Why’d you let her in? What—”
I changed quickly—Hyde to Jekyll, Batman to Bruce—and headed upstairs. The girl was asleep on one of the chairs. I nudged her as gently as I could.
“Hi.” Well, what else could I say? “I’m Bruce Wayne. Sorry to keep you waiting so long, Miss…”
She was beautiful—softly beautiful, if that makes any sense. She didn’t wear much makeup, she just had the beauty in her eyes and face and whole manner. I hadn’t seen a girl like her in a long time.
“Oh! I’m so sorry, Mr. Wayne, I mean—I mean, I didn’t mean to fall asleep on…” She shook auburn locks as she spoke.
“No, no. It’s my fault. I kept you waiting too long.”
She stood up and held out her hand. I shook it gladly. “I’m Julie Madison, from the Gazette. I’ve been trying to set up a meeting with your office for a week; I finally go to talk to a Mr. Fox, and kept telling me you were out of town.”
“Oh, Lucius,” I said, as if that were the relevant point of the conversation. “Yeah. He says that.”
Julie Madison must have thought I was an imbecile.
“The Gazette is interested in what Gotham’s leading citizen thinks of the uptown killer, and I’d appreciate it if we got to talk…”
Our eyes met for a moment, and I probably showed her more of what I was thinking than I should have. She laughed. It was nice, really nice, so nice that, I realized quickly, it couldn’t go anywhere. I had to nip it in the bud right then and there, for my sake and even more for hers.
I said that I was sorry, Miss Madison, but I don’t take questions from the press, certainly not in my home at this hour of the night. I apologize and hope you can get your story elsewhere. And very quickly she was gone.
I hated that. I hated that even more when I saw Alfred staring at the whole sad scene from the doorway, and I snapped, “Well, what did you want?”
Back to the caves, back (I thought) to that book, but I fell asleep in the chair. I had dreams—really awful dreams. Something Gordon had said, about one of the mothers screaming like a wounded animal, oh God.
Oh God in heaven. I saw her mouth grow wider and wider, like the Clown’s mouth, and then I turned around and there was Julie Madison. That’s why, Julie Madison. That’s why I can’t answer your question, that’s why I can’t go to dinner with you. Don’t you get it? Damn it, what did you want? Huh? And the book.
The book was there too. It was huge, huger than anything in reality, and it swept up the mother and Julie, and in their place was a city, like something out of hell. Limitless abysses of inexplicably colored twilight and bafflingly disordered sound—yet it was still the book, if you can understand dream-logic. And a creature in the background, a horrible white creature behind the buildings. All of them, together, and some weird muttering, some screaming, some… Julie, Julie, what is it? What’s wrong? Julie? I, I’m, but the mother… My mother. My mother was there. She was screaming, in the night. So many colors, so many, so, Julie, like a wounded animal, and
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Post by Nalkarj on Nov 1, 2018 4:13:37 GMT
To be continued tomorrow.
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Post by Power Ranger on Nov 1, 2018 8:41:46 GMT
Wow Salzmank that’s enthralling. Nicely written.
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Post by Nalkarj on Nov 1, 2018 16:17:15 GMT
IV: Bruce Wayne
I woke up the next day, feeling like I hadn’t slept at all—you know that feeling, when you’ve obviously slept but can’t rationally process that fact? Probably a bad way to describe it, but I felt like I hadn’t slept in years. Those stupid dreams. I did all the normal tests on the book; Gordon was right, of course. No fingerprints, no DNA, nothing. Whoever this guy was, he was good. Alfred, taciturn, brought in brunch along with a copy of the Gazette. Front page was about the “Gotham Gutter” again, of course. No mention of the book, which was good. I breathed deeply, sat back, and read it over again.
“Revelations in black which shall destroy.
Read on, fool, and bide the danger of knowledge.
Oh woe be unto Carow.
“I wander by the skeleton trees and seat myself
where I watch the leering fish.
A child screams to Polaris.
Glass throws the newly risen moon at me.
Grass sings a litany unto warm Notus.
And pointed shadow moves slowly to the Occident.
I sit between the leering fish and the
five galloping unicorns, and I fall madly in love
with the pearl of pearls who shall destroy.
And Darkness and Decay and Madness hold illimitable dominion over all. Amen.”
I recognized the last line, of course—Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death.” And “Carow,” which was on the template inside the book, “Chester Carow,” whom the police had not been able to find. What was I dealing with? This nut who murders children, and probably on a whim. Why am I doing this? Why…
“Alfred.” I’d noticed he’d just come into the room. “I’m going to need the car—not the one I used last night.”
He was happy, which was nice—he wanted me to be a normal, functioning human being. Alfred… He knew; I mean, he understood why, but he was like a dad seeing his kid do this nutty stuff. He probably thought I was going to grow out of it one of these days.
I headed back into Gotham, to Gainsly Park. The trees had already changed here; it was autumn, an old American autumn of burning leaves and spice and pumpkins. Kids were playing the park. They were safe. I had slept so long, apparently, that by the time I got to the Library someone was already turning the key in the lock, about to leave.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Hi. Um. My name’s Bruce Wayne, I’m…”
“The Bruce Wayne?”
The guy who asked was pug-nosed and short—he didn’t look like a librarian, I’ll tell you that, but that’s what it said on his name tag, under “John Gresch.” He didn’t really look like a John either.
I smiled stupidly and said, “Well, I’m the Bruce Wayne who lives around here. I’ve got a few questions about a book.”
Gresch looked at his watch and turned the key the other way in the lock. “I guess I could spare a few minutes. What’s up?”
I made up some story about having found some old book—oops, I’d forgotten it at home—but it was poetry, had been owned by someone named Carow…
He’d never heard of Carow, but we checked the card-catalog and compared it to the shelves. Nothing, nothing at all. It was bizarre—not any more than anything else in this case, of course, but… I left and returned home. It was getting dark, and time to wear a different mask.
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Post by Nalkarj on Nov 18, 2018 22:57:09 GMT
V: Batman
Jim Gordon looked at the D.A, the D.A. gave a nod, and Gordon lit the signal for the second night in a row. He hoped, he prayed, he’d done the right thing in giving the Bat that book…the one clue. One clue. Ever since the press-conference, all hell had broken loose. That was exactly what the maniac wanted, of course. What’s with this city, Jim? What’s with this world?
The Bat was there.
“Uh.” How do you talk to this guy? This is gonna be like a cocktail party, Jim, useless chatter, useless introductions, except that one of the introductees is wearing a bat costume. You can’t get over that, can you, Jim? “Um.” He turned to Dent.
Harvey Dent was a young guy, handsome, a liberal white-knight crusader against injustice, with an Irish temper to match. He was a good lawyer when his passion for equality didn’t trump his skill for argument; he would fume at an unsympathetic judge and had skirted time and time again with being held in contempt of court. Gordon hadn’t liked him at first—too good-looking, too starry-eyed (and how quickly, Gordon knew, idealism could turn to cynicism), with his hair slicked back like he combed with a blowtorch. But—well, Jim? He’d taken a liking to the kid, the young hotshot lawyer who wanted to clean up the city. The big problem was when Dent eventually figured out the city wasn’t going to be cleaned up without full-on warfare.
Thus the Bat.
Jim Gordon said, “Uh, Harvey, this is, um…”
“The Batman,” said Harvey Dent, and he held out his hand. Batman didn’t take it.
Dent smiled, and his teeth glistened. “You’re an interesting character, you know—our wingman, in a way.” He was smart enough not to laugh at his own joke. “Our backup when we’re up a creek. And God knows we’re up a creek now. Have you made any progress?”
“We’ll see.”
“You’re gonna keep it to yourself? OK. OK.” Harvey Dent shuffled around a bit. “You know you can’t do that forever, you know that a vigilante like you should officially be…”
Jim Gordon cut in: “We’ve got—something.”
Something, Jim? Less than something. A wing and a prayer from a lunatic was more like it. He started to speak, and then something flashed into his head: what if the killer were the Joker, as the clown called himself, or Cobblepot, or one of the others? Neither of them was in Arkham—only a few of the masked freaks were, including
“Nygma. Edward Nygma, the one who calls himself ‘Riddler,’ because the clown was so successful calling himself something. You put him there.”
“Yes.”
Dent snapped, “He says he knows who the killer is. He wants to—”
“To bargain with us?”
“No,” said Jim Gordon, sighing. “To bargain with you.”
Arkham deserved its name, even if officially the state had taken it over and renamed it “Gotham Regional Psychiatric Hospital.” It’s a tremendous building, resembling for all the world some cyclopean city, or Milton’s Pandæmonium—huddled, sagging gambrel roofs and crumbling Georgian balustrades. It sits on its own island on the West River, between Uptown and Midtown. Gothamites pretend it simply isn’t there; you don’t even want to look at it. Arkham is old, with thin walls and crumbling cells; the wind blows through at night and freezes the inmates. It probably would have been torn down years ago, should have been torn down years ago, but not even the most ambitious reformer, not even the state, not even Harvey Dent, had decided to touch it.
The Bat took his own vehicle, a black Tumbler that tore through the streets. Gordon and Dent tagged behind, in an unmarked police car. It was rather like ducklings following their mother, if mama were an armored tank. Dent didn’t say much during the ride, but Gordon could tell what he was thinking. It made sense, of course it made sense—but if the police couldn’t do it, if the D.A. couldn’t do it, and it needed to be done, well…?
It took Dent’s influence and state connections to get in, as they were going over the Commissioner’s head: they all know it, and as they headed out of the car Gordon realized he could lose his badge if anyone else found out. He shook off the realization and dropped his gun and holster on the table to be checked in. Neither he nor Dent would actually be going into the holding area. Edward Nygma had just asked for the Batman.
Nygma’s cell was in a block for more high-functioning patients, placed between Crane’s and Lonnie Machin’s. He was smart without being intelligent—obsessed with rhymes, wordplay, riddles of course. His goal had never been the crime but rather the game: the clues, the thrill, outwitting the police at every turn. Not immoral as much as amoral, blind to passions, blind to emotions. Everything and everyone was sport. Everything and everyone was as bloodless as a game. He had just been making a name for himself when the Bat arrived in Gotham—and was overjoyed at his arrival. Finally a challenger, finally another games-player.
“Oh! How good of you to stop by. I get so lonely here in these dismal old halls, without anyone to talk to.” Nygma, being Nygma, the exaggerated courtesy.. “As for my thanks, something to get your mind working: what wears a long black cape, pointy black ears, but puts other people in asylums? Guess the answer and you win a hundred dollars! Hm? Hm? Any guesses?”
“Information. You said you have information.”
“Oh, no! Let’s have a little fun with this. It was a terribly simple riddle. Terribly simple. One could hardly call it a riddle at all, you know. Tut tut, intelligence is severely lack…”
Batman grabbed Nygma by his collar and nearly smashed the man’s face on the bars. “Two people are dead. One of them is a little girl. If you’ve got something, talk. If you don’t you’re going to wish you’d never opened your goddam mouth.”
“I…” Nygma stepped back, shook himself off. He spoke more loudly, more confidently, and he smiled. “Oh, no need for violence. No need for violence. Oh, that’s beneath you. Just playing a game, asking a riddle. I do have information. I know!” He was yelling now, gleefully. “I know who killed the little girl and the junkie. And you, you the world’s greatest detective, you’ll never…”
“I’m listening.”
“And I’m ready to negotiate terms.” He stood perfectly still in his cell, not even blinking, and he was all of a sudden very calm and quiet. “I don’t necessarily mind being here, with three fine meals a day and a library to which I have access. Compared to Blackgate it’s a second Eden, you know. Gives one the chance to exercise one’s brain. Brain—brain—tut, now where have I heard that recently? Oh, yes, of course: what is filled with some bizarre warts and has one hat but two heads, yet with no… No, you don’t want that. I want a place to think without listening to these uncultured madmen raving all day all around me; I want a cell nearer to the infirmary, far from here, far from these fools. It’s a reasonable request, you know.”
Nygma sat back in his chair and arched his fingers, like Sherlock Holmes. He was smiling from ear to ear.
The Bat said, “O.K.”
The smile disappeared. “O.K.? I mean—you mean—just ‘O.K.’? You’ll do it?”
“You know I can’t make you any promises, Nygma. But I can say you’ve aided a police investigation and should have more leniency given to your request. If you do aid a police investigation.”
“Ah.” He looked towards the wall. “Oh, how lovely it would be if I only had a window again—if that doesn’t sound too much like Hannibal Lecter. Well, one must enjoy the little pleasures, with truly fleeting life is. Yes, the information, of course—I’m talking about that book, the one Gordon gave you.”
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Post by Power Ranger on Nov 18, 2018 23:30:24 GMT
V: Batman
Jim Gordon looked at the D.A, the D.A. gave a nod, and Gordon lit the signal for the second night in a row. He hoped, he prayed, he’d done the right thing in giving the Bat that book…the one clue. One clue. Ever since the press-conference, all hell had broken loose. That was exactly what the maniac wanted, of course. What’s with this city, Jim? What’s with this world? The Bat was there. “Uh.” How do you talk to this guy? This is gonna be like a cocktail party, Jim, useless chatter, useless introductions, except that one of the introductees is wearing a bat costume. You can’t get over that, can you, Jim? “Um.” He turned to Dent. Harvey Dent was a young guy, handsome, a liberal white-knight crusader against injustice, with an Irish temper to match. He was a good lawyer when his passion for equality didn’t trump his skill for argument; he would fume at an unsympathetic judge and had skirted time and time again with being held in contempt of court. Gordon hadn’t liked him at first—too good-looking, too starry-eyed (and how quickly, Gordon knew, idealism could turn to cynicism), with his hair slicked back like he combed with a blowtorch. But—well, Jim? He’d taken a liking to the kid, the young hotshot lawyer who wanted to clean up the city. The big problem was when Dent eventually figured out the city wasn’t going to be cleaned up without full-on warfare. Thus the Bat. Jim Gordon said, “Uh, Harvey, this is, um…” “The Batman,” said Harvey Dent, and he held out his hand. Batman didn’t take it. Dent smiled, and his teeth glistened. “You’re an interesting character, you know—our wingman, in a way.” He was smart enough not to laugh at his own joke. “Our backup when we’re up a creek. And God knows we’re up a creek now. Have you made any progress?” “We’ll see.” “You’re gonna keep it to yourself? OK. OK.” Harvey Dent shuffled around a bit. “You know you can’t do that forever, you know that a vigilante like you should officially be…” Jim Gordon cut in: “We’ve got—something.” Something, Jim? Less than something. A wing and a prayer from a lunatic was more like it. He started to speak, and then something flashed into his head: what if the killer were the Joker, as the clown called himself, or Cobblepot, or one of the others? Neither of them was in Arkham—only a few of the masked freaks were, including “Nygma. Edward Nygma, the one who calls himself ‘Riddler,’ because the clown was so successful calling himself something. You put him there.” “Yes.” Dent snapped, “He says he knows who the killer is. He wants to—” “To bargain with us?” “No,” said Jim Gordon, sighing. “To bargain with you.” Arkham deserved its name, even if officially the state had taken it over and renamed it “Gotham Regional Psychiatric Hospital.” It’s a tremendous building, resembling for all the world some cyclopean city, or Milton’s Pandæmonium—huddled, sagging gambrel roofs and crumbling Georgian balustrade.. It sits on its own island on the West River, between Uptown and Midtown. Gothamites pretend it simply isn’t there; you don’t even want to look at it. Arkham is old, with thin walls and crumbling cells; the wind blows through at night and freezes the inmates. It probably would have been torn down years ago, should have been torn down years ago, but not even the most ambitious reformer, not even the state, not even Harvey Dent, had decided to touch it. The Bat took his own vehicle, a black Tumbler that tore through the streets. Gordon and Dent tagged behind, in an unmarked police car. It was rather like ducklings following their mother, if mama were an armored tank. Dent didn’t say much during the ride, but Gordon could tell what he was thinking. It made sense, of course it made sense—but if the police couldn’t do it, if the D.A. couldn’t do it, and it needed to be done, well…? It took Dent’s influence and state connections to get in, as they were going over the Commissioner’s head: they all know it, and as they headed out of the car Gordon realized he could lose his badge if anyone else found out. He shook off the realization and dropped his gun and holster on the table to be checked in. Neither he nor Dent would actually be going into the holding area. Edward Nygma had just asked for the Batman. Nygma’s cell was in a block for more high-functioning patients, placed between Crane’s and Lonnie Machin’s. He was smart without being intelligent—obsessed with rhymes, wordplay, riddles of course. His goal had never been the crime but rather the game: the clues, the thrill, outwitting the police at every turn. Not immoral as much as amoral, blind to passions, blind to emotions. Everything and everyone was sport. Everything and everyone was as bloodless as a game. He had just been making a name for himself when the Bat arrived in Gotham—and was overjoyed at his arrival. Finally a challenger, finally another games-player. “Oh! How good of you to stop by. I get so lonely here in these dismal old halls, without anyone to talk to.” Nygma, being Nygma, the exaggerated courtesy.. “As for my thanks, something to get your mind working: what wears a long black cape, pointy black ears, but puts other people in asylums? Guess the answer and you win a hundred dollars! Hm? Hm? Any guesses?” “Information. You said you have information.” “Oh, no! Let’s have a little fun with this. It was a terribly simple riddle. Terribly simple. One could hardly call it a riddle at all, you know. Tut tut, intelligence is severely lack…” Batman grabbed Nygma by his collar and nearly smashed the man’s face on the bars. “Two people are dead. One of them is a little girl. If you’ve got something, talk. If you don’t you’re going to wish you’d never opened your goddam mouth.” “I…” Nygma stepped back, shook himself off. He spoke more loudly, more confidently, and he smiled. “Oh, no need for violence. No need for violence. Oh, that’s beneath you. Just playing a game, asking a riddle. I do have information. I know!” He was yelling now, gleefully. “I know who killed the little girl and the junkie. And you, you the world’s greatest detective, you’ll never…” “I’m listening.” “And I’m ready to negotiate terms.” He stood perfectly still in his cell, not even blinking, and he was all of a sudden very calm and quiet. “I don’t necessarily mind being here, with three fine meals a day and a library to which I have access. Compared to Blackgate it’s a a second Eden, you know. Gives one the chance to exercise one’s brain. Brain— brain—tut, now where have I heard that recently? Oh, yes, of course: what is filled with some bizarre warts and has one hat but two heads, yet with no… No, you don’t want that. I want a place to think without listening to these uncultured madmen raving all day all around me; I want a cell nearer to the infirmary, far from here, far from these fools. It’s a reasonable request, you know.” Nygma sat back in his chair and arched his fingers, like Sherlock Holmes. He was smiling from ear to ear. The Bat said, “O.K.” The smile disappeared. “O.K.? I mean—you mean—just ‘O.K.’? You’ll do it?” “You know I can’t make you any promises, Nygma. But I can say you’ve aided a police investigation and should have more leniency given to your request. If you do aid a police investigation.” “Ah.” He looked towards the wall. “Oh, how lovely it would be if I only had a window again—if that doesn’t sound too much like Hannibal Lecter. Well, one must enjoy the little pleasures, with truly fleeting life is. Yes, the information, of course—I’m talking about that book, the one Gordon gave you.” Excellent! |
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