Batman 3 - Batman Forever (9 page)

He’d been torn ever since Batman’s early days. On the one hand, success meant vindication of a project and desire that had consumed Wayne’s life. On the other hand, if he failed . . . and presuming he survived the failure . . . then there were so many other, healthier (physically and mentally) avenues that he could pursue. So many chances for a happier life. Except could he be happy then?

Was this dismal cavern truly the only place where Bruce Wayne could find peace?

What sort of bleak fate was that? Living in a cave, underground . . . spiritually, emotionally buried alive.

T
he guard’s name was Tully.

Once he’d been a cop. He’d walked the streets of Gotham city for twenty-seven years. Spent his entire life as a beat cop. Been shot twice, including one time that had put him on a respirator for a week. Won three meritorious service medals and a commendation. He’d never married, never had kids, and devoted his entire life to the force.

And after those glorious twenty-seven years, his medals and commendations were collecting dust on a shelf at home, and his pension wasn’t even beginning to cover his simple, meager living expenses. So he’d taken a job at the Second National Bank of Gotham as a security guard.

They’d assigned him to the twenty-second floor of the bank’s office building, guarding the company vault containing billions in negotiable bonds, stocks, and other assets of high-powered corporations. Appropriately, it was his second night on the job when he’d found himself in more trouble than he could ever recall being in during his entire tenure as a cop.

Tully was tied up on the ground, bound at his wrists and ankles. Standing around him were six thugs of varying sizes and shapes, but all of one consistent personality type: nasty. Tully was trying not to look at them, for fear was bubbling furiously inside him and he hated the way it made him feel. Instead he was staring out the window at the great signal hanging in the sky. A bat illuminated against a low-hanging cloud.

And then the signal was blocked out by the twirling disk of a gleaming silver coin. It passed the signal by, and then descended. A hand speared out and snagged it easily.

A man stepped into view. He was standing in profile, looking off to the right He was rakishly handsome, at least on his good side.

Once upon a time, he’d gone by the name of Harvey Dent. But that was a name, he’d decided some time back, that only put one side of him on display. That was no longer sufficient. He had needed a moniker that captured his duality, so that when people were dealing with him, they’d know
all
aspects of the man they were doing business with.

The name had somehow come naturally to him.

“Counting on the winged avenger to deliver you from evil, old chum?” asked Two-Face. He clutched his coin more tightly.
“We
most certainly are.”

Regrets poured through Tully’s mind. All of them centered around the notion that if only he’d encountered Two-Face when he was young . . . if only he’d been facing the six thugs when he was young . . . all of it when he was young, instead of a scared old man with a lousy pension and a hearing aid which, at the moment, he would have given anything to be able to turn off. Disgusted by his weakness, he tried to keep his voice level as he asked, “You gonna kill me?”

Two-Face didn’t seem to hear the question at first. He simply continued to stare out into space. But then, quick as a cobra, he was squatting next to the guard. He held the silver dollar under Tully’s nose. The clean side winked at him.

“Maybe. And maybe not. You could say we’re of two minds on the matter. Are you a gambling man? Suppose we flip for it?”

Tully said nothing.

It didn’t matter. Two-Face was no longer listening. Instead he was speaking softly to himself, murmuring, “One man is born a hero, his brother a coward. Babies starve, politicians grow fat. Holy men perish, junkies become legion. And why is this? Why? Heredity? Environment? Fate? Karma? No, my friend. Luck. Blind, simple, idiot, doo-dah luck. The random toss of the great celestial coin is the only true justice. Triumph or tragedy, joy or sorrow, life or, dare I say—”

He turned the coin over, and there was the scarred face of the coin “. . . death.”

Two-Face looked to the left and the guard tried not to look away. He didn’t succeed.

“Death,” he repeated, and he flipped the coin.

It twirled in the air and landed directly in front of the guard’s face. Tully didn’t see what side came up and, to prolong the agony, Two-Face brought his foot down quickly on top of it. He winked down at the sweating guard, as if they were old buddies sharing a few laughs over a harmless game.

“What greater thrill? What greater agony? Like the touch of God.” He put up a finger, waggling it slightly. “Wait. Wait. Wait. How will justice be served?”

He removed his foot from the coin and the guard forced himself to look at it.

The unblemished head looked back at him.

“Fortune smiles upon you, my friend,” Two-Face said gently. “Another day of wine and roses, or in your case, beer and pizza.”

The guard sobbed with relief, and hated himself all the more for the weakness.

Two-Face snapped his fingers, twice. The thugs converged on the guard. One lifted him up by his bound arms, another by his legs.

“You said you’d let me live.”

“Too true. And so you shall. Nothing better than live bait to trap a bat.”

Two-Face nodded to the two guards, who carried Tully away to fulfill his function in Two-Face’s scheme. One of the thugs stepped forward and said with just a hint of annoyance, “Too many witnesses. We shoulda just killed him . . .”

Two-Face appeared to give the matter a moment’s thought, and then he flipped the coin. This time he didn’t let it fall, but snatched it out of the air and slapped it onto the back of his hand.

The scarred side was visible.

Before the thug even had time to register the significance of the decision, Two-Face roared. His hand shot out, pinning the thug’s throat to the wall. He shoved his face into the thug’s and snarled, “You stinking piece of virus-breeding rat droppings. Did you question our coin?”

“Boss . . . you’re . . . you’re hurting me . . .” he managed to get out.

“Oh,
are
we?” Two-Face thrust his face even closer, and the petrified thug felt his foul breath blowing at him. “Look at this face. Look closer! Do you think there’s anything on earth we don’t know about pain?”

And then he started slapping the thug across the face, each smack punctuating the next four words: “. . . Never . . . Argue . . . With . . . Us!
You got it?”
he bellowed.

He released his grip on the thug, who promptly sank to the floor. “Anything you say. Boss,” he managed to get out between bleeding lips.

Two-Face nodded approvingly. “Exactly. Excellent response.”

He walked away from the thug and stepped over toward the window, taking care not to present a target. Far below him, in the heart of Pan-Asia town, he could see the SWAT teams and police wagons, the spotlights that had been set up, everyone scurrying around as if any of their activities had the slightest meaning or importance to him.

All of it was irrelevant.

Only one being had anything to do with anything . . . and anything to do with him.

“You’re all little bugs,” he murmured. “We are waiting . . . for the big bug.”

“How do you know he’ll be here?” asked Chase Meridian. Commissioner James Gordon, wishing like hell that his bad heart hadn’t forced him to give up smoking, chewed on a breadstick as he surveyed the heavens. The Bat-Signal continued, unblinking. “He will be.”

“You don’t know for sure,” pressed Dr. Meridian. “He could be out of town, or sick. He could be dead. The man behind the mask might have suffered a nice, simple embolism and be lying on a slab somewhere with a tag on his toe. Being bigger than life doesn’t guarantee a spectacular or heroic death. Look at Lawrence of Arabia.”

“I don’t get out to movies much,” replied Gordon. He swiveled his gaze towards her. “Is there some point to this,
Doctor?”

“I’m wondering why you have such unflappable confidence in him? Is it the cape? The mask? That emblem?”

“I don’t appreciate the condescension, Doctor.”

“My apologies,” she said.

“You want to know why I have confidence in him?”

“Yes.”

He pointed towards the Bat-Signal, which was suddenly blocked out by a swinging figure. “That’s why,” he said.

Batman dropped down, face-to-face with Dr. Chase Meridian.

The meeting had been a long time coming for her. She had built up a variety of no-nonsense, or various businesslike introductions to make.

“Hot entrance,” she heard a voice that sounded remarkably like her own and, even more astonishingly, passing through her lips. Inside her there was an agonized
Oh my Godddd did you just
say that?!

For his part, Batman seemed to have lost interest in her. Actually, that might not have been the case; it was entirely possible that he hadn’t any interest in her in the first place. All business, he turned to Gordon. “Two-Face?”

Gordon nodded. “Two guards down. He’d holding the third hostage. Didn’t see this one coming.”

“We should have, though,” said Chase, trying to insert herself back into the conversation. “The Second Bank of Gotham . . .”

“On the second anniversary of the day I captured him,” said Batman. It was hard to tell whether he’d figured it out on the way over or had just realized it now.

Chase had never had any sort of lengthy intercourse with a man behind a mask, unless one counted that time she’d spent two weeks at hockey training camp dealing with a suicidal goalie. It was disconcerting. All the little things she sought to help her “read” people were utterly absent. It was like staring into a black hole. She pushed gamely forward, saying, “How could Two-Face resist? Uhm . . . Chase Meridian,” she prompted, when Batman didn’t shake her outstretched hand.

He still didn’t, instead merely staring at her as if she were some new strain of bacteria, or perhaps a rare animal who’d popped up at a zoo one day.

It made her feel very odd. She never thought she would encounter a situation where a man dressed like a six-foot bat could make
her
feel unusual.

Gordon piped up, sounding slightly regretful, “I asked Dr. Meridian to consult on this case. She specializes in . . .”

“. . . multiple personalities,” Batman interrupted. “Abnormal psychology. I read your work. Insightful.” He paused, then added, “Naïve. But insightful.”

“I’m flattered. Not every girl makes a super hero’s night table.”

Dr. Meridian was the expert, but for all Gordon knew, Batman had similar credentials in civilian life. So Gordon addressed the question to both of them: “Can we reason with him? There are innocent people in there.”

Chase shook her head. “Won’t do any good. He’ll slaughter them without thinking twice.” She didn’t seem to be aware of the irony of her comment about “thinking twice.”

If Batman noticed it, he chose not to say anything. “Agreed. A trauma powerful enough to create an alternate personality leaves the victim . . .”

“. . . in a world where normal rules of right and wrong no longer apply,” Chase picked up.

“Exactly,” agreed Batman.

“Like you.”

Batman looked at her inscrutably. It was impossible for her to be sure, but it seemed—just for a moment—as if there was the slightest hint of a smile on his mouth. But if it had been there, it was gone just as quickly. Feeling the need to fill in the gap, Chase said, “Let’s just say I could write a hell of a paper on a grown man who dresses like a flying rodent.”

“Bats aren’t rodents, Dr. Meridian. Same phylum, Chordata. Same class, Mammalia. Different order, though: Chiroptera, not Rodentia. No sharp front teeth for gnawing.”

She inclined her head slightly at the correction. “I didn’t know that. See? You are interesting. And call me Chase.” She turned to look at a bustling group of SWAT members. “By the way, do you have a first name? Or do I just call you Bats?”

She looked back to see his reaction, but he was gone.

That was when she heard the crash. A crash that sounded as if the world were exploding.

The building shuddered under the impact, but Two-Face seemed unperturbed. Instead he raised his voice and shouted, as if addressing an audience in an ancient coliseum, “Let’s start this party with a bang!”

From outside there was a grinding of motors, the whoosh of air, and this time when the wrecking ball struck the building, it didn’t merely quiver. Instead the wall exploded inward, cement and plaster raining down and the massive ball swinging to within inches of Two-Face.

He didn’t even glance at it, instead sanguinely checking his watch. He frowned. Could it be that Batman would let him down, and not be . . .

From the elevators nearby there was the amazingly ordinary sound of a chime, indicating that one of the cars had reached the floor.

Two-Face nodded approvingly. “Punctual. Even for his own funeral.”

He whirled toward the elevators, his gang members leaping forward with machine guns under their arms. One of them tossed a gun to Two-Face, who caught it easily and aimed at the elevator doors. The entire maneuver, from the signal that alerted them to the clattering of machine guns, took no more than three seconds. Two-Face chided himself, even as he and his men opened fire. He would have far preferred it if they had trimmed it to two seconds.