He walked slowly across the street towards the mountain. The SWAT teams
were starting on the far end with heat seekers, 'viper pits', the man had called them.
Two dark vans pulled up and the rear doors were being opened. German Shepherds
leaped to the pavement, tails wagging furiously, pulling at the leashes, wanting to run
free. Cars were starting to arrive and people were starting to gather in clusters. From
far off he heard the cut of helicopter blades.
Unhurried, he arrived at a far edge of the pile, unpopulated, and picked his way
around the edge, out of view. He pushed his recovering hearing to the limit and,
studying the pile, found the general physical location of only one heartbeat. Likely it
wasn't Luthor. Nothing could save an unprotected body from a collapse like this.
But an armored body could survive by the Man of Steel.
No one really caught a good look at the brilliant light that lanced down out of the
sky a minute later. But everyone did hear the cold, heavy explosion as it hit the north
end of the mountain. Everyone stiffened and turned, ready to leap forward at a pistol
shot. A grating, a rolling thunder proved to be that pistol shot as the SWAT teams
pulled out and started racing to the far end. The German Shepherds were given free
rein and bounded over like a living wave surging down the street. In fits and spurts the
gathered onlookers started running over. Someone was bawling orders over a radio to
the arriving Blackhawk helicopter.
Lois realized she was alone by the car. A sudden feeling of panic came over
her they were all racing in the general direction Clark had disappeared in. She started
to cross the street, then nearly went down as one bare foot came down on a sharp,
broken edge of tar. Hobbling as best she could, she actually made it over before the first
wave hit. Someone was whistling off the dogs, and the SWAT people were swarming
over the shoulder of the pile like mountain goats.
The first thing she saw was Clark. She eased carefully around a concrete slab
pushed up taller than her, hopped painfully around some brick work and half-ran, half-
skipped the rest of the way. Clark was just pushing aside some steel work with effort to
reveal something black beneath. The older man with the holster wasn't far behind the
SWAT members, moving surprisingly quickly for being heavy set. The SWAT people
stopped several yards away, but the older man went through them and clambered over
the rubble. "Alive?" he called hoarsely, dread over his face as he locked eyes with Clark.
Yes, he's alive. I can hear his heartbeat, loud and clear. He's got a slight heart murmur, by the way--
"I--yes, I think he's alive," Clark answered quickly, pushing some remaining
concrete pieces off the chest and hips which he had carefully placed there seconds ago, because he couldn't very well explain to them that he'd flown in at supersonic speed and blasted the concrete away and used his body as a bridge to hold back a sixteen ton slab of concrete and steel while he carefully disengaged the black form and flown him back over to a somewhat less hazardous spot and--and . . .
Clark took a deep breath. "I think he's alive."
The older man gained the clear spot and crouched down by the still black figure.
"There a heartbeat?"
"Um . . ." Clark stumbled for words, kicking himself. Okay, buddy, how do you know he's alive? Did he give you a sign?
"I don't think there's any way to get a hand in and feel the jug," the older man
was murmuring to himself, eyes traveling over the black armor, searching for some way
in. He was just reaching a hesitant hand toward the black hood when something stopped
him, a slight movement of the head, the faint twitch of someone dreaming. There was
stirring behind darkened eyelids, and Clark heard the heart rate take a jump.
"It's my fault, it's my fault," the older man was muttering. "Shouldn't've told him
Metro wanted Luthor alive--"
"Not your fault," said a soft, hoarse whisper, and the eyes slitted open. "My
fault."
"You okay? Broken bones?" The man half turned, hollering, "Get a med unit
over here--"
He was cut off by a black hand on his forearm. "No medical."
"Huh?"
He turned back abruptly. Clark had moved off a little as the man was rolling
slowly to his side and pulling a knee up. He paused, then got on hands and knees.
Another pause and he was up on his haunches. With a low grunt he pulled himself to his
feet, staggering slightly. The older man steadied him with a hand on his shoulder.
The crowd of fifty or so that had gathered broke into some light applause and a
few whistles at that. Lois stared--it seemed like to them this was a play put on for
someone's amusement, and that no lives had actually been risked. She felt like there
were several volumes of sub-text she was missing here, but she just didn't have the
mental energy to form any more questions that wouldn't get answered.
"No kidding around, now--are you sure you're alright?" the older man challenged,
concerned, following the black figure as he picked his way around the edge of the pile.
"There's ambulances right over there. I don't want you just waltzing out of here with
a--a thrown out back, or--" and here he pointed accusingly, eyes lighting on something,
"--or a limp! What's that? Fractured hip--"
"And what would you do, Commissioner? Order me to a hospital?" There was a
brief flash of a wry smile. He raised a hand and flicked the cloak back over a shoulder,
settling it in place.
On impulse, Clark slipped into his path. "He's right, you know," he said. "You
could at least let them look at that leg."
The black man stopped in his tracks, and their eyes locked for a long moment.
Clark all but saw images and emotions flit past in the space between them. The one that
won out was resignation. "I wear a mask," a soft voice finally came. "I'm just not that
strong." His gaze lowered listlessly, like that of a student before his superior, and he
walked slowly past Clark, avoiding the edges of the rubble.
Clark stood there a moment, uncertain, not turning to watch. Lois approached
him slowly, and he saw her favor her right foot. "Lois, your foot--"
She shook her head. "It's nothing--I just came down funny on one foot. Clark
. . .who is that?"
He turned to see the slowly retreating black figure. "Beats me," he said softly,
and then to himself, But I'd sure like to find out . If the finer abilities like his internal
vision were back, he'd look beneath the mask. But there was no guarantee he'd
recognize the face. It could be anyone.
"Well, I'm starving, and I want to take a nice long shower and fall over," Lois was
saying. "I'm going to the ambulances."
"Yeah. Uh . . ." Clark's mind flicked back to the bare bones of their situation.
"We should probably call Perry. I mean, I'm sure he's heard, but . . ."
Lois nodded, easing carefully around the debris and trying her best to hide her
limp. "He'd probably like to hear the sound of our voices."
The SWAT teams had cleared out, and a few policemen were still there. The
Blackhawk helicopter had left. A television crew was racing over as fast as the
cameraman could run. The blinding white light plowed to a halt only a few yards away
from the black car. The reporter was a casually dressed woman looking as though she'd
been called on duty mere minutes ago. Clark had to turn up what he had of his hearing
to catch what she was saying.
"Once again this evening we're on the west end of the hydro-dam, by what now
remains of LetterPerfect Printing's property. The hostage situation has taken a deadly
turn as Gotham's local menace, the Bat-Man, has continued his role as a target for evil
minds. At least two innocent lives have been crushed in the wheels of vigilantism--"
The woman had to stop just then, as two small figures darted by her, nearly
causing her to lose her balance. They weren't more than seven or eight years old, a boy
and girl. Their shrill cries of "Mama! Mama!" were directed at a woman who was
running toward them, still half-wrapped in the dark blue blankets from one of the
ambulances. They seemed to hit each other at full speed, the woman thudding to her
knees and wrapping her arms around them. Her face was red and distorted from crying.
A man was coming from a different direction, having detoured around the car and the
television crew. The crew had paused at that, the shot broken up, and it was then that
the black figure walked right by them. He stopped and turned his head, eyes staring
almost sightlessly in their direction. "There's your slant, Kominski, and you can take
that out of context." The words were laced with bitterness, and Clark all but saw the
black gauntlet launched at their feet. The man flicked a look at the reunited family, and
a cold wind seemed to blow through the camera crew.
No one said a word. He crossed wearily to the car, doing nothing to hide the slow
limp. Sliding a hand around to his lower back, he gathered the heavy black cloak in one
hand with what looked like a well practiced motion and settled into the car. The engine
growled to life even before the shield had slid back into place. The onlookers backed out
of the way as the car rolled forward slowly, almost like it was uncertain of itself. As it
gained a safe distance, the rear rocket vent blazed to blinding life and the air shimmered
with the heat. It passed by the length of the building rubble, crossed an abandoned tar
strip, and entered a dark alley. The flame shrunk in the distance, finally disappearing
around a corner.
The man Clark now knew to be the police commissioner, James Gordon, was the
first to break the silence. He shifted his weight and placed a casual hand near his .38. "I
would advise you to get the hell out of here." He directed the words to the now
bewildered television crew with a dirty look, then turned and started heading towards
the gathered squad cars and ambulances.
Clark went through the rest of that short evening on automatic pilot. He and Lois
were questioned by the local authorities and fussed over by a well-trained and thorough
ambulance team. The mere mention of Perry White's name quickly produced a cell
phone, and they called him with the news. The majority of the staff back in Metropolis
had spent the past thirty-six hours hovering around the televisions and fax machines in
the newsroom, hoping for some good news. Perry put them through on the speaker
phone, but encouraged all to be brief, as the two in Gotham needed time to recover.
Clark let Lois handle most of the more direct, detailed inquiries, as she knew more of
what they had gone through. He asked the emergency personnel around him a few
questions of his own and found that only one person had died, courtesy of Luthor--one of
the hostages. They were privately assuming Luthor was dead, too, crushed beneath the
building, but still, a crane and several bulldozers were on the way, set to spend the night
with dismantling the rubble and using head seekers to look for any signs of life in the
pile. The road emergency assist program of the car rental company had kicked in, and
he and Lois were given free rates on another Bonneville which he drove back to their
hotel, Lois dozing next to him. They arrived at the Radisson and upon crossing the
threshold, were met with a welcoming committee. About a half dozen hotel staff,
including a member of management, were there with offers of assistance, ranging from a
wheelchair to counseling to meals. The in-house restaurant offer was the first taken,
and both of them had the first decent meal in about twenty-four hours. Clark was
unwilling to press Lois on details of what happened, but he did manage to get a little
more information on her perceptions of the events. The situation told him that one
particular course of action would probably be appreciated, and so as she took the
shower, he offered to go find a few newspapers. When Lois emerged from the shower,
wrapped in a robe, she was greeted with a tapping on the French doors in the living
room.
For just a moment she nearly panicked. Her wits were dulled with fatigue and
she was still on edge after her experiences. She took a step back, uncertain, then
padded over to the single lamp that was still lit in the room and turned it off. A few
moments while her eyes adjusted to the dark, and then she was able to recognize the
silhouette at the doors. By the time she covered the three or four steps to the doors she
was sobbing. She managed to work the lock and wrenched the doors open, and
immediately threw her arms around him. They stayed that way for a minute or two,
him just holding her as she finally released her fear, anger, and fatigue of the last day.
"I'm sorry," he finally offered as she backed away a moment, wiping her eyes on
the sleeve of her bathrobe. "I let you down."
She looked up at him, red eyed, mouth trembling, trying to regain some calm.
She took a deep breath. "I can't tell you how much I hate this town."
He nearly smiled at the unrestrained bluntness of the remark. "It's not Gotham.
It was Lex Luthor," he said gently. "I knew you and Clark Kent had gone to Gotham,
then heard hostages, and when I heard that one of them was you, I knew it had to be
him. I knew he had headed east to try to avoid me."
"If they find his body in the rubble . . ." She shook her head. "Sorry, but I just
can't seem to work up any pity for him anymore," she finished bitterly. "I hope that
doesn't make me a bad person."
"No one can blame you for feeling that way, after what we've all been through."
"He did have kryptonite?" she asked suddenly, turning to face him again.
He nodded, and she saw his expression change, heard the hardness in his voice.
"He did. I should have known he would have some as a reserve. He was ready for me."
"Who was that black creep?" she demanded, changing the subject. "Have you
ever heard of him? What in the world--"
"I know of him," he broke in, trying to cut her off and calm her, as it seemed like
she almost started crying again. "It's alright. We . . .had a chance to talk. We're not
done sorting out what happened, though."
"Who is he?" she demanded again, but he was starting to back off.
"We all came out alive, and that's the most important thing," he said. "All of
Luthor's men are rounded up and in custody, and you're safe now. So is Clark Kent."
"What about you? Are you alright?" she asked quickly, as he backed up against
the railing of the balcony. He smiled slightly.
"A little weak yet because of the kryptonite, but I'll be back to normal by
tomorrow morning."
He had turned away and almost was airborne when she called to him. "Wait!
Superman--" He turned back. "You're a sight for sore eyes."
This time he did definitely smile at the words and the relief in her voice. "So are
you." For a moment his gaze flicked over her, and she looked down at herself, wearing a
light green bathrobe and with a towel around her neck for her wet hair. Despite
suddenly feeling self-conscious, she nearly started laughing, close to happiness for the
first time in over a day.
He vanished then, in a swirl of red and blue, and she watched as long as she could.
She hadn't realized how much she had wanted to see him until she opened the doors.
She closed the doors now, locking them, and went back into the bathroom to wash her
face after crying. When she emerged from the bathroom a minute later, Clark was
coming through the door of the suite with an armful of newspapers. She told him of her
visitor, and of course he expressed some regret at not having been there. She only had
the mental energy to glance at some of the headlines of the papers, and then went to
bed. He watched her with an eye of pity and affection--the former for what she'd gone
through and the latter for how she would probably respond to it. Mentally she was the
strongest woman he'd ever met.
After she was asleep, he went as quietly as he could, using the shower and then
skimming through the newspapers. The gaps in his memory were very nearly filled,
then, from his own recollections, Lois' account, and the papers. He set them aside and
then just sat there, staring at them absently as he ran through the images in his mind
from start to finish. They'd never left him alone, never given him a chance to use a little
muscle or speed on the higher level until it was too late. The kryptonite had fired
through him, killing him in slow motion until the doors had been thrown wide and he'd
been plunged out into life.
And he found himself with a desire to research bats.
* * *
Only big cities like Metropolis or Gotham would have anything like a twenty-four
hour library. It was past midnight, and he actually had three to pick from. He chose a
public one, as opposed to a university one--there might be fewer people around. Sticking
to the ground as much as he could, he used a little higher speed when he was certain he
wasn't being watched, and got ten miles across Gotham in under two minutes. The West
Municipal Library was quiet but open, and the staff at the front desk, two young men
very casually dressed, gave him only the slightest look as he went down to the lower
level. Microfilm and fiche were his targets, and he went back ten years on a whim,
starting with just the Gotham Globe.
The film and fiche readers were in partially enclosed areas, darkened so the
reading was easier. Moving as quickly as the materials and equipment would allow, he
buzzed through nearly one hundred rolls of film in under ten minutes. When he was
done he found himself wishing he'd done it sooner--the perspective he gained on Gotham
through the paper couldn't but help the short series he and Lois were working on.
After the Globe he moved on to the Gazette, getting what he wanted in less than
half the time because he now knew the time frame. First sightings were reported a little
over nine years ago. He went into the fiche of local magazines, then dipped into crime
and psychology. Court reports worked well as cross-references. After a half hour he'd
exhausted all the avenues he could think to find in a library. He found a quiet corner,
using a book for cover, and thought about what he'd found.
The police and local authorities had sought to hush it up at first--no need to alarm
the population with stories of "long-winged beasties and things that go bump in the
night," as one reporter had put it. In the dark alleys, on the rooftops--word had fled
quickly through the underground not to spend too much time there after a heist, or
something would get them. The police themselves didn't know what to think of the
alarming stories at first. He was shot and shot and shot, would go down, dead to all
intents and purposes, but there would be no blood. Then he would suddenly,
terrifyingly, come to life and frighten the living daylights out of the murderer or rapist.
He would walk off the top of buildings, and when they would run to the edge and look,
nothing was there. There'd be gravel on the rooftops and his feet would make no sound.
He moved quickly and silently through the night.
The first undeniable sightings had happened during the city's two hundredth
anniversary celebration. It could be said, though, that there was no celebration--a man
named Jack Napier single-handedly introduced a reign of terror by poisoning cosmetic
products. Batman cracked the code and leaked the information to the press, but that
didn't deter Napier for long. In a particularly twisted move, Napier challenged the city
to revive the city festival, then scrambled a parade down forty-sixth street, complete
with helium-filled parade balloons. Then the spigots on the concealed nerve gas tanks
had opened, releasing a deadly green gas that killed nearly fifty people.
That was when a modified Stealth craft had winged down the street. In a pretty
piece of piloting, the craft had slipped down into the street, in between the buildings, and
hooked the balloons on the wings. The balloons were deposited ten thousand feet up in
the atmosphere. A pass to pick off Napier nearly proved fatal, though, as Napier had
gotten off a lucky shot at some stabilizers on the ventral side. The craft had made an
undignified landing up the street to the foot of the old Gotham cathedral. Napier had
made it to the top of the bell tower with a hostage in tow, planning to rendezvous with a
helicopter, and the Stealth pilot, Batman, had followed Napier up. What happened up
there was a little unclear, due to a limit of witnesses willing to talk, but the end result
was clear enough--ten minutes later, Napier had taken a quick trip to the sidewalk. All
told, he had officially been credited with three hundred and forty-three deaths.
That had happened eight years ago in March. Three years later, in December, a
confusing, high profile fiasco had brought out Batman again, and this time the name of
the game was mayoral blackmail. An estimated thirty years ago, a family with the
unfortunate name of Cobblepot had chosen to abandon their unfortunate child in the
sewers. The child survived in the sewers to adulthood, and then emerged not long
before Christmas. It started innocently enough--he wanted to come up into the real
world and try to have a normal life. He had done the research and discovered his real
name, Oswald Cobblepot, quite a linguistic stretch for one who up until then had been
calling himself the Penguin. It was discovered only much later that he'd blackmailed a
local millionaire power plant owner, Max Schrak, into supporting his rise to street level.
Schrak, in desperation, had lit upon the idea of making the not-quite-civilized sewer rat
into a mayoral candidate. The two unwilling allies held each other in check by mutual
blackmail until two errors cost them dearly. First, Cobblepot had gotten a little too
forward with the idea and saw it as grounds to destroy those in his way. And second,
he'd attempted to frame Batman for the deaths. A swift and furious counter-frame from
the man in black had followed, and Cobblepot exploded with rage as the city turned
against him. He managed to kidnap Schrak, and Batman hunted him down through the
sewer network, flushing him up top and electronically jamming his attempt to detonate
hundreds of rockets targeted at random throughout Gotham. The rockets had been
redirected at the Penguin's lair, and one of them had caught the Penguin himself. His
body was recovered some days later.
Schrak had had a more grisly death. The authorities had recovered his blackened
remains from the sewers, apparently electrocuted with a massive charge, but the only
one to have seen the particulars was Batman, and he had only very reluctantly
surrendered the information to Police Commissioner James Gordon some weeks later.
Schrak had been electrocuted by someone calling herself Catwoman. She was an artist
with a bullwhip and had a taste for blowing up buildings, and seemed to have a vendetta
against Schrak. There was something bordering on the supernatural about her--witnesses had claimed to see her fall from tremendous heights and walk away from it,
apparently unharmed. Gordon had hinted in an interview that he had information from
a "reliable source" that if Catwoman did indeed have nine lives, only one of them was
left, and she'd likely be keeping a low profile. Much of the press sniffed that the so called
reliable source was actually Batman, and that he was the one with Schrak's blood on his
black gloves. In any case, Catwoman hadn't been caught, and only two very brief,
unconfirmed sightings had been reported since.
Last fall, in October, another particularly disturbing event still had Gotham
resting a little uneasy. The city's former district attorney, Harvey Dent, had been
horribly disfigured in an incident involving a mob boss, and the resulting damage had
twisted his mind, creating a deadly split personality. He began referring to himself as
Two-Face, as indeed, his face was split neatly in half, the undamaged side on the right
and the left making the phantom of the opera handsome by comparison. For a man who
passed the bar, it was an eerie turn to multimillion dollar robberies, hostages, and
communication with a machine gun. Where Catwoman had Schrak on her list, Harvey
"Two-Face" Dent had had Batman in his sights, holding the man personally responsible
for his situation. He claimed Batman double-crossed him by not supplying the cover he
had promised, leaving him unprotected as Dent had waded into a particularly nasty mob
hearing. The resulting spree of mayhem from Dent had, by and large, been pinned on
Batman's armored chest, not only by Dent but by the media as well.
In short order Dent had found himself with an unusual ally, one Edward Nygma,
who had a mind for electro-neural engineering. His holographic television attachment
allowed people to first experience television as a VR in their own minds, and then, in
later, improved editions, as something they could control to act out their own fantasies.
The police later traced a resultant rise in pornography activity and sex crimes across the
city to this attachment, but Nygma had claimed his business was legitimate clean fun,
only entertainment, and what people did with it couldn't be blamed on him. What
Nygma never revealed, however, was that while this information was going into people's
minds, he was reading information out of their minds. Not removing it, but seeing
everything, from personalities to professional secrets to hard information like credit card
numbers, top secret government information, and Swiss bank account codes. It was a
kind of mental rape, without anyone's knowledge or consent.
The final denouement was set in motion by a call from a private butler from
Wayne Manor--Dent and Nygma had targeted Bruce Wayne. Not only was he the
nation's wealthiest, but he was also Nygma's former employer. If the authorities had
known of Nygma's operations with Two-Face under the pseudonym "the Riddler", it
would have called up an increased security presence around the man. Dent was
considered extremely dangerous, and even the police were given the orders "Do not
attempt to apprehend unless accompanied by sufficient force". As it was, law
enforcement was caught utterly by surprise, and so was Wayne. A Dr. Chase Meridian
was at the mansion with Wayne that evening, and Dent and Nygma had kidnapped Dr.
Meridian. Wayne himself had been bullet-grazed across the forehead and suffered a
concussion. Fed up with the situation, Commissioner Gordon had called Batman in on it,
and the dark freelancer had responded with a vengeance. In short order, he had
shattered the assembly that was feeding the neural link to Nygma's brain, and it broke
Nygma's mind. He had gone immediately from police headquarters to Arkham Asylum,
never to be put on trial for his crimes. Dent himself fell victim to the same trap that he'd
prepared for Dr. Meridian and Batman. One curious side effect to the morbid ending
was that Nygma loudly and repeatedly claimed to know who the man behind the mask
was. When asked, he would howl that it was him. This led some authorities to suspect
that Nygma had skimmed just enough off the right mind to find out what Batman's true
identity was. But if he did once know, that information was inaccessible to his mind now.
In the nine years since the first sightings, Batman had made other brief, shadowy
appearances--in the alleys, on rooftops, in high crime areas, some stories true and others
fabricated by people who wanted to get their story in the paper. On several occasions he
had acted as a kind of point man for the local police forces in making initial breaks into
crack houses. One bust had resulted in the largest cache of cocaine in city history, with a
street value of ninety million dollars. He also displayed a coldly accurate skill with crime
scene forensics and detective work. But other than a tenuous agreement with Police
Commissioner Gordon, he worked alone, in shadow, apparently without back-up, relying
on physical ability, technology, and street smarts, a kind of straight-laced daredevil
Houdini. The city had given him a tag line: the Dark Knight.
The whole, tangled story gave Clark the strangest feeling. I never thought someone else would be doing it. He felt the strongest desire to talk to him, pick his
mind, find out why he did it, but apparently the man was notoriously difficult to get a
hold of. They had a way to call him--a searchlight was mounted at the Gotham police
headquarters, and every request to crank it up went through Gordon. Clark didn't want
to do anything so obvious. He wished there was a way to talk to him in private--
Wait a minute. He knows who I am.
Clark's head jerked up. He had known enough to remove the kryptonite, and
Lois had said his name at least once in earshot of the man. And his words, "I'm just not
that strong", the look on his face . . .he knew. He definitely knew. And for Clark, not
knowing the mind in the shadows was chilling.
He had to find out who this man was.
He set the book aside and rose from the chair, then stopped. How do I go about doing this? For that matter. do I have the right? He stumbled across me accidentally; do I have the right to hunt him down?
I have to. I have to assure myself that he's got a tight mind.
Alright. Let's start with logic.
Clark crossed back to the chair and sat, again using the book as cover. Looking at
the timeline, the man behind the mask was probably between the ages of thirty and
fifty. Reviewing what he'd seen of the man's physical condition, he was probably in the
late-thirty to early forties range. What else?
Clark cast around and settled on the equipment. The array was intimidating.
That car, what the press had snickeringly named the "Batmobile", and what people were
calling the Wing, the modified Stealth--well, not really a bomber. It was more of a jet
fighter. These things did not grow on trees, so he probably had a very generous
benefactor. Or maybe the man himself was exceedingly rich.
Rich? How? One Publisher's Clearinghouse hit wouldn't cover the Wing. Popular
assumption was that there was Stealth technology there. That had to take telltale
connections, not to mention extraordinary money and research. He was, theoretically,
rich, bright, and connected. Audit the rich men in town and find out which one had
money in the millions disappearing into a black hole. Then you'd have your night flyer.
The night was another tip. But that went back to the money--how was he rich?
No lottery ticket could fund this for long. He was either born with a silver spoon or
taught himself to eat with one. It would take a pretty driven body to start life with
pocket change and end up a millionaire while still managing to keep the evening schedule
clear, but Clark didn't want to rule that out. Not impossible, just unlikely.
Batman only came out at night. Even twilight was extremely iffy. The earliest
he'd come out was just before five one evening, but it had been winter and the sky had
been black by then. So what happened if he had a bad night, got banged up? Most
mortals would check in late the next day, or maybe not show up at all. A rich man who
could make and break his own rules. An executive type.
Try personal. Was he married? Kids? There had been no ring on his finger
beneath the black gloves, but that wasn't saying much. Anyone who could have a
heavyweight job, dance with suicide in the evenings, and have a family seemed unlikely,
unless they relished the idea of burning out by the time they were forty. All of this was
assuming that he was rich, that it wasn't a benefactor.
Finally there was the biggest clue of all--that mask, or rather, what the mask
didn't cover. Clark pictured it in his mind, and stripped off the black as best he could,
but the face he came up with wasn't very distinctive. There wasn't any recognition
factor, but on the other hand, he'd just gone through quite a bit of Gotham's society in
the library. The business section of the Globe must give a clue.
With effort, Clark picked through what he could remember of the business
sections he'd seen. He hadn't really concentrated on them when he was looking for
information on Batman. From what he could remember, though, a faint, disturbing trail
began to form.
Setting the book down, he crossed to the cabinets that held the film and took out
a few rolls at random, some recent ones. Loading the first one into the reader, he
worked at normal speed until he found what he wanted. The transfer wasn't very good,
so the picture was blurry, and he didn't want to use his vision and augment it, just in
case he made a mistake. Removing the roll from the reader, he replaced the rolls in the
cabinet and pulled out fiche of The Gothamite, working from the index. Sliding a cell
into the reader, he moved it forward through the issue until he found the feature article
he wanted. Complete with a full page color picture. And Clark was very certain he felt
his stomach do a strange roll.
Bruce Wayne.
Bruce Wayne is Batman.
And I've got an interview with him tomorrow morning at ten.
