BATMAN: The New Continuity

Ben Dillanfeld had two kids he hardly ever saw but had to pay for anyway, and an ex-wife who hated even the sight of him. He wasn't that bad of a guy, though�at least he didn't think so. Sure, he wasn't loaded-down with friends, or anything, but how many people could really say they are and not be full of shit? And�and maybe, maybe he wasn't a totally "good" person (he was a car salesman, for God's sake), but did he really deserve to get fucked�to just get fucked like this? One day, a father and husband, and then�BANG�no kids, no wife, sleeping on an old bed in a shitty little house. Someone was having themselves a big laugh at all of this�not that thinking that made Ben feel any better.

When he reached over to slap off the alarm, his hand brushed against rough fabric. The word "wool" popped into his head, but he didn't spend much more than a second on it. His eyes opened a little wider than they had been, and Ben became aware that there was a man sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at him. Well, wasn't this perfect? Ben rolled over on his back and sat up in bed�the thought occurred to him that he really should've been much more . . . excited, or angry, or startled, or something, than he was.

"Morning, Ben." The man's voice was loud but it wasn't really intrusive. Kind of soothing, actually. He had long, sort of wavy brown hair, and a pretty well-trimmed beard on his face. He was dressed in what looked like a robe, white, and it just sort of hung on him. There was a red and brown woven vest on him, too, that looked homemade.

"Aw, Christ . . ." Ben couldn't've helped saying it even if he had seen it coming, which he hadn't. He just shook his head, chalked it up to the fact that he'd just woken up, and stared at his . . . visitor?�intruder?

"Ben, come-on," the man on the edge of the bed pleaded, smiling just a little, "I'm sitting right here."

Ben sighed. Too much�this was too much. "Who . . . who the fuck are you? And what the fuck are you doing here?"

The man inhaled. "Well . . . I think you know the answer to that first part. Don't you?"

Ben just stared at the man with utter disbelief. This guy had some balls on him. Really big ones.

"And if you know the first part, the second part follows right along," the man finished.

"Look, just get the fuck outta my house, huh?" Ben gestured toward the door, trying to shoo this guy away like he was a dog or . . . or something. Goddamn, it was early.

"Aw, don't say that, now," the man said, sounding a little offended. "I can imagine this is a little unbelievable, and I know it's early, but you don't wanna just throw me out of here. Trust me."

Ben's hand went over his eyes as he sank back onto his pillow. He lifted the hand slightly and regarded the man on the edge of the bed from beneath it. "You're serious?"

"I met with this kind of resistance all the time when I first started out," the man said. "I guess I won out, though. I've got a billion followers. How many people worship Pilate?"

"What was Pilate like, anyway?"

The man's eyes widened. "Oh, he was an asshole."

Now Ben's eyes widened. Not that he was believing a word of this (not really), but still . . . "What?"

"He did crucify me. . . . Don't misunderstand�I forgave him for it a long time ago. But, objectively . . ." The man sighed and regarded Ben expectantly. "Come-on, Ben. You know who I am, I know who I am. The difference is you don't believe it yet. You don't believe it's possible. But, since I'm sitting right here, I'm not even asking for that big a leap of faith, am I?"

Ben stared at the man, but just had to look away after a few seconds. He shook his head to himself. "You want me to believe that you're Jesus Christ? Sitting on the edge of my bed at seven in the f� . . . at seven in the morning?"

"Don't censor yourself, Ben. I said 'asshole' a second ago."

"Doesn't the Bible say something about that?"

The man nodded, but dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand. "The Bible says a lot of things. Do you know, I haven't even read the whole thing? . . . Anyway, Paul wrote that, and when it came to Divine Messages he was only around fifty-fifty. The truth is, God has a lot more to worry about than the specific words people say. That makes a lot more sense, doesn't it?"

Ben gave an acquiescing nod. "I guess so."

The man continued to regard Ben steadily. "You still don't quite believe me, do you?"

"Not really."

He gave a heavy sigh. "All right . . . You're name is Benjamin Peter Dillanfeld, you're forty-three years old, you just moved into this house a month ago following your divorce from your wife of eighteen years. You work as a salesman at Piggleson's Pontiac. You've worked there for ten years, and for six years before that you were a salesman at the Ford Lincoln-Mercury dealership at the Excelsior Automall. You got your cable fixed two weeks ago and the repairman was two hours and eleven minutes late."

"So you've been following me around for awhile, or bugging my phone, or something. Work a miracle, or something."

A smile spread over his face. "I already have, Ben." He nodded at the clock. Ben sat up again and looked at the clock's digital display: it read 7:00. "We've been talking for a little bit since that alarm went off, haven't we, Ben? That should at least say oh-three or oh-four by now, wouldn't you say?"

Ben said nothing. He just looked from the clock to the man on the bed, then back to the clock.

"Come-on," the man told Ben, standing up and patting his hand on the mattress. "We're wasting time." The man glanced at the clock. "Well, not really, but I think you know what I mean. Get up and get dressed; it's time to go."

"Go?"

Oh, why the hell not? It wasn't that unbelievable, was it? Ben had been raised Lutheran, so he at least knew of the concept of Jesus. Why couldn't this be true? Life was shit, so why not? And the man was right�it wasn't that big a leap�he was right there! Okay, so it was still a pretty damn big leap . . . but, it was Ben's to make, right? If he wanted to believe this guy was Jesus Christ, then he could. It was up to him. Besides, if this wasn't Jesus then what the hell was he doing here now? He wasn't taking anything, and if he wanted to commit murder he could've done that before Ben even got awake.

"The journey is part-way physical," Jesus explained. "So, get dressed. It's a little chilly outside."

Ben threw off his covers and got out of bed. Jesus was leading him toward his closet. "What do you mean, part-way physical? I mean, what about my body?"

Jesus gave a confident shake of his head, and his hand went to Ben's back. "It'll be here. We're still at seven a.m., remember. Once we're gone, and life goes on, your body will still be here."

It made sense. Ben reached the closet. Wait a second�what about his kids? He looked over at Jesus suddenly. "My kids'll be fine without me, won't they? Without my child support?"

Jesus nodded. "They'll be fine. You don't think God would be taking you now if he didn't have all of this worked out already, do you?"

"No," Ben said, "I guess not." His hands went to the knobs of his sliding closet doors, and Jesus took a step back from him. He looked at Jesus again, who just smiled warmly and nodded toward the closet. Ben pulled the doors open. A man stood in the closet. He was dressed in a robe like that of Jesus, and wore a similar, only longer and more colorful, vest. He held a double-barrel shotgun with both hands. Ben looked at him, his head empty but for one word: Goddammit. "Who the hell are you?" Ben asked the man in the closet wearily.

"John the fuckin' Baptist," the man in the closet replied with an impatient sneer, and then fired the shotgun.

Tuesday
Major Crimes Squadroom
Gotham City Police Headquarters
3:54 p.m.

Ben Cone was at his desk when Bullock and Bock walked in together. "I hate�I mean hate�working four to twelve," he heard Bullock say as he shrugged off his brutalized gray overcoat and dropped it on a hook by the door.

Bock followed Bullock over to their desks, shaking his head at his partner. "I really don't see the difference," Bock said. "I mean, other than the hour it's the same job. We almost never get street calls up here, so what's the big deal?"

"My bedtime's at eleven, Bock," Bullock pleaded as he sat down in his chair. "Christ, you know I'm useless after ten-thirty most nights."

"Maybe if you'd get up early and do some sit-ups, take a walk once in awhile, you wouldn't be so damn fat and you'd have more energy to burn," Bock offered, grinning toward the end. Ben looked over at Montoya, who was sharing a similar grin with Berkley. He pulled out his chair and sat down just as Kitch emerged from his office.

Kitch walked over to the coffee pot, taking a quick look around the room as he went. "Good, everyone's here."

"I got a complaint, El Tee," Bullock announced, leaning back in his chair, eliciting a few loud creaks. Kitch filled his mug, then turned around and regarded Bullock openly from where he stood. "I'm sick of this son of a bitch here harassing me," Bullock said, pointing at Bock.

Bock closed his eyes and lapsed into quiet laughter, shaking his head.

Kitch's eyes went to Bock for a moment, then back to Bullock. "He won't leave you alone, huh?"

"No, sir," Bullock said with an exaggerated shake of his head. "Lieutenant, I can't even sit down without some snide remark coming from him about my weight, or my eating habits, or my odor."

"Is that the body odor or the cigar odor?" Kitch wondered, looking at Bock.

Bock looked up at Kitch, still laughing. "It's sort of a combination of both," he said, then fell into a longer, more pronounced fit of laughter, leaning back in his chair, then leaning forward across the desks and punching Harvey lightly in the arm.

"Tell 'em it's just more of you to love, Harv," Montoya suggested, then covered her mouth to conceal her own growing laughter.

Ben smiled, folded his arms and leaned forward on his desk, just watching. He glanced at Berkley, who leaned back in his chair and looked across the room at Kitch. "So what's the deal, Lieutenant? Second shift want the night off?"

Kitch looked at Berkley strangely. "I told Gordon we wanted the day off . . ." Ben saw Bullock shoot a bullet of a stare at Kitch for a few seconds, before the lieutenant took on a smile of his own and shook his head. "Berkley's got it," he assured Bullock. "The night guys wanted tonight off, so we switched for a day."

"Hope we're not so accommodating to overnight," Bullock muttered, crossing his arms over his big chest.

"Overnight guys don't want to switch shifts, usually," Berkley said. Everyone looked to him, and he sat up in his chair. "I worked overnight my whole first year at Seventy-Eight. The guys on that shift were all pretty happy with it. Most of them had been on the same shift for ten or fifteen years."

"What made you switch?" Ben asked him.

Berkley shrugged. "The captain who worked overnight and the captain who worked day shift talked it over, and they decided I'd be better for day shift. I've worked that ever since, except for times like this."

"Anyway," Kitch said in his loud lieutenant's voice, then took a quick sip of coffee, "I think we all agree that the Dominguez-related trails are running dry. I hate to call them unsolved cases, especially this early, but until we get something else in that area, I'm directing you all to get to work on other things. I've got a basket on my desk full of fresh cases just bumped up, so there's plenty to go around for everyone." Kitch took another sip of coffee, and walked into his office.

Bullock looked at Bock with a wrinkled brow and a pouty look. "I really hope we draw an easy one . . . I'm worthless after�"

"�worthless after ten-thirty," Bock interrupted, finishing his partner's thought for him.

Kitch emerged from his office, coffee mug still in-hand, three file folders under his left arm. He stood next to Bock's desk and set his mug down on the corner, then took the folders into his hands. The top one he handed to Ben, having to take a few steps to reach him. "Pass that over to Rene�," he asked Ben, handing him a second folder. Ben handed that one to Soong, who passed it to Montoya, then Ben looked at the folder he'd been given.

"Saved the best one of all for you guys," Kitch said dryly as he dropped the third folder on Bock's desk. "Courtesy of one of Ben's old friends from Seventeen."

While Bock opened the folder, Bullock looked over at Ben with a perplexed expression on his face. "I thought you came here from Fifty-Two?" It wasn't really a question, but it sounded like one.

Ben nodded. "I did. Worked my whole career there, until coming here."

"So, you just knew the guy from Seventeen? Like, met him on the job once and got to know him?" Bullock asked, sounding like he was trying to clarify things with himself.

Ben shook his head. "Nope. This guy used to partner with me a lot sometimes, actually."

"Then how the f� . . . Now I'm confused. Now I'm confused."

Bock grinned and looked at Ben. "That wasn't no trick now, was it?" They both laughed.

"Shaddap, ya ivory-toothed monkey," Bullock told Bock with a smart grin. He looked at Kitch for an explanation. "You know what's goin' on, don't you? I know you do. You probably majored in Department History in college or something, didn't you?"

Kitch took up his coffee mug, took a sip, then walked over to Ben and Berkley's desks, leaning against where they met. "Seventeen and Fifty-Two used to be just Seventeen," he explained, then looked over at Ben. "Right?"

Ben nodded. "Got it."

"The crime rate in Seventeen was traditionally pretty low, but about eleven or twelve years ago, when the crime rate really started to shoot the moon all over the city, that one area was too much for one precinct to handle. So, they widened it out a little, split it about in half, and put another station house in the second half. They renamed the old station house that had been Seventeen, Fifty-Two, and the new one they built became Seventeen." Kitch exhaled.

"About half of us who had worked at Seventeen stayed at Fifty-Two, and another half were transferred to the new Seventeen, like my buddy Mess," Ben continued. Everyone was completely silent.

"Why not make the new station Fifty-Two?" Bullock asked, as if he'd been personally offended by the story.

"The new one was closer to Eighteen, so it made sense in terms of location," Ben explained.

"Well," Bullock said with a sigh, "that's what I get for not working as a cop here for my whole life and looking up the whole history of law enforcement in this city."

"Yes," Kitch agreed, smiling at Bullock. "Interesting story, though, isn't it?"

"Oh . . . fascinating," Bullock remarked dryly as he leaned over his desk and snatched the folder from Bock's hands. "I'm definitely a richer man after hearing it."

"Well, you've got your hands full," Kitch said. He started back into his office. "See if you can talk to some people while it's still early." He took a sip of coffee. "Catch 'em as they get off work."

The door to Kitch's office closed. Ben opened the folder he'd been handed and skimmed the first page quickly. Soong leaned over toward him, craning his neck to check out the folder's contents. "What do we got?" Soong asked.

Ben closed the folder after a second and handed it to Soong. "Quadruple homicide slash home invasion, from the looks of the first page." Ben grabbed his mug and stood up from his desk and walked across the room to the coffee pot. He poured himself a cup and started back for his desk, but stopped after a few steps and changed course to Kitch's office door. He knocked twice quickly, then opened the door and leaned inside.

Kitch was at his desk, looking like he'd just sat down. He looked up. "Yeah? What's up, Ben?"

"Nothing important," Ben said, shaking his head. "I was just curious why you decided to give the Dillanfeld case to Bullock and Bock." Kitch eyed Ben silently. "When I'm more familiar with the area."

"When the press get their hands on it�which they will, despite our best efforts�this will be a high profile case," Kitch said thoughtfully. "They're my high profile detectives," he added with a nod toward the squadroom. Kitch regarded him in silence for another second. "It's not a skill call, Ben, if that's what you're thinking," he assured him. "Bullock and Bock are used to it, that's all." He reached up into the IN box at the front edge of his desk, pulled out a case-file and started to read it. "Besides," he said, looking up again briefly, "you and Kevin got the last one."

Ben thought that over for a second. "In that case, thank you," he told Kitch before he left the office.

Gotham City Police Department
17th Precinct
6:38 p.m.

"Harvey Bullock," he announced casually, pointing behind him as he added "Mackenzie Bock. Major Crimes. We need everything down here on the Dillanfeld case."

Bock looked from the desk clerk to the floor and wondered if Bullock was as amused by the clerk's stereotypical manner and appearance as he was. The man was one of the few people Bock had encountered in his work to whom the term "bookish" could be accurately applied. He was short, balding (with an awful comb-over, the mere sight of which in the mirror would probably be more than enough to drive Bock to totally shave his head), and dressed in brown polyester slacks and a white pinstriped shirt�he even wore a pair of thick black-rimmed glasses. The only thing missing was the pocket-protector, and Bock couldn't let go of the idea that the clerk had somehow just misplaced it. It had to be somewhere.

The clerk responded to Bullock's request by checking a scrawled-over form on his clipboard and asking "Dillanfeld, Ben; Homicide?"

Bullock nodded. "You got it."

"This way," the clerk directed, tucking the clipboard under his arm and stepping around from behind his desk to lead the detectives down one of several aisles of shelves holding evidence. Bullock and Bock followed along behind him, but let him get about five feet ahead of them.

A grin came over Bock's face as a thought occurred to him. He nudged Bullock, and leaned toward his ear. "Ever watch MTV? About nine, ten years ago?" he whispered.

Bullock shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe once or twice."

"Remember Toby Radloff?"

Bullock gave Bock a strange look. "Killer Nerd?" he asked. "And Bride of Killer Nerd? That guy?"

Bock nodded, then pointed ahead of them at the clerk. Bullock scoffed, shook his head. "I'm tellin' you," Bock insisted, "you put some hair on the man and there you go; he's your killer nerd."

Bullock looked to consider it for a moment, then laughed lightly with a grunt. "I guess so," he said, shrugging agreeably.

Up ahead, the clerk, who seemed totally oblivious to the conversation between Bock and Bullock, stopped at a point about three-fourths of the way back along the length of the shelf, pulled out a box, and took a few steps toward the detectives. He handed Bock the box, which was fairly light, and the top of which was labeled DILLANFELD, BEN�HOMICIDE, along with the date of admission of the box's contents to evidence. The clerk pointed the way back to the front desk. "You'll need to sign this out up front," he said. Bullock and Bock turned around and followed the clerk.

Major Crimes Squadroom
Gotham City Police Headquarters
7:12 p.m.

Bock put the box down on his desk while Bullock walked around to his own desk and shrugged his overcoat off, dropping it across the back of his chair. Bock pulled the top off the box, and Bullock walked back around and stood next to him. The contents of the box were few, and not encouraging.

Bock reached in and pulled out a clock-radio, bagged and having already been dusted for fingerprints. Paperclipped to the bag were several sheets of paper, notes from the crime lab regarding findings on the clock. Bock also removed a small glass vial containing tiny spheres of shot that had been removed from the body of the victim�1.0623 ounces of 16-gauge shot, read the label on the vial. This vial was accompanied by a findings report as well. Bock felt along the bottom of the box and pulled out another collection of papers, detailing the fingerprints lifted from the scene.

That was it. Bullock gave his partner a blank look, then pushed him gently aside and looked down in the box. He must've found it to be as empty as Bock had, because he stepped away from it after a second and sighed. "That's it, I guess." He took a step forward again and looked inside the box. "No Polaroids?"

"Huh-uh," Bock said. He picked up the vial of shot and held it up at eye-level as he shook it gently.

Beneath Wayne Manor
8:22 p.m.

Tim stood up from the chair, grabbed his gloves and his mask, and started out of the costume vault. He hit the lights off on his way through the door. Bruce was standing in front of the computer, his arms extended down to the keyboard, watching the big monitor. The email program was open, Tim saw as he walked up to stand behind Bruce. He commented "I didn't hear a 'You've got mail!' . . ."

Bruce started typing something, then stopped after a few commands had been keyed out. The window displaying the current message closed. Bruce shut down the email program, turned around, and walked past Tim, pulling his cowl on as he moved toward the Batmobile, which sat ready on the turntable.

"We're leaving now, I guess?" Tim asked, pulling on his gloves, then pressing the mask over his eyes.

The car's roof canopy opened, and Batman stopped before he climbed inside. "I may be slightly late for the rendezvous tonight. Wait for me," he said. Batman slipped into the Batmobile, and the car was gone in less than another minute. Before that happened, Robin was on his way to the elevator.

En Route to Gotham City
8:25 p.m.

As the Redbird approached the intersection of the supplementary tunnel and the main access tunnel from the cave, Robin switched on the two-way radio. He turned, hardly needing to slow down thanks to the angle of the intersection, and could just barely detect the dark shape of the Batmobile, far ahead of him in the dimly-lit tunnel.

"So, Nightwing's somewhere in Switzerland now, I guess?" Robin said.

Batman didn't answer for a long time. Robin was about to give up and turn off the radio at his end when he heard "I suppose he is."

Robin waited a few seconds. "Any idea when he'll be back?"

"No." The response was almost immediate this time.

After that, Robin didn't say anything for a few seconds. Up ahead, the Batmobile reached the end of the tunnel and shot out onto the narrow road beyond. "So, I'm supposed to take my usual patrol and then . . . �what, just wait for you at the cathedral? I mean, how long are you gonna be?"

"Not very long," came the curt reply.

Robin switched off his microphone and shook his head. "Whatever . . ." he said to himself with a sigh.

1705 Frederick Street
8:33 p.m.

The house at the end of the short concrete walk was small, and all the windows were dark. Yellow police tape traced the perimeter of the tiny front yard and around to the back of the house. Bock lifted the tape slightly and held it so Bullock could step underneath to the other side, then stepped over himself. Bullock remained a few steps ahead of Bock, hands slipped into the front pockets of his low-riding slacks. "You talked to anyone about this case? I mean, heard anything?"

Bock shook his head. "Not really. No."

Bullock shrugged. "It's just that Kitch says he saved this one for us, right? And, I heard that the boys at Seventeen, or Fifty-Two, or whatever the hell, weren't even allowed to wink to the press about this."

"Yes . . ." Bock said, following right along.

Bullock got to the front door, grasped the knob with his right hand and started fishing around in his pocket with his left, and turned to Bock briefly. "So . . . so far, all we got is a divorced guy with a hole in his chest. I mean, big fuckin' whoop, am I right?"

The key came out of Bullock's pocket and went into the lock. He opened the door and stepped inside. Bock followed, and stopped before he'd even gotten two steps inside the door.

All the lights in the house were on, it looked like. And it was obvious that someone else was in the house. The sound of squeaking bed springs was easily heard. Bullock didn't look too nervous, but he unsnapped the band that held his gun in its holster just the same. "Who else is in here?" he called, starting to take slow, cautious steps toward the door where the noise was coming from, which must've been to the bedroom.

The bedroom door swung open suddenly and a figure swiftly emerged. Bullock's gun was out and up, and Bock had a tense hand on his. The man coming from the bedroom pulled-up like a horse rearing back on its hind legs and turned his face, grimacing in fear, away from Bullock's gun. "Whoa! Whoa!! Jesus Christ!!" he screamed. The man was white, with short brown hair, wearing a cheap looking leather jacket. A camera, which looked pretty expensive to Bock, was in his hand, which was now quivering quite noticeably.

Bullock had put his gun away by this point, and the caution on his face was replaced by angry curiosity. "What the hell are you doing in here?"

The man started to answer, but Bock held up his hand and quieted him before he could even start. "More importantly than that, who the hell are you?"

The camera had a strap that went around the man's neck; he let it hang in front of him as he extended a hand to Bock, and then to Bullock, who didn't look like he knew the guy either. "I am so sorry, guys," he said with a tone of profuse apology. "Look, my name is Gregory Tate, and�"

"'Gregory Tate'?" Bullock asked.

"It's not my real name," the man relented as he withdrew his hand. "It's more of a nom de plume, I guess. Or, maybe nom de cam�ra . . ." He took a moment to laugh lightly at his own joke as he reached into one of his jacket pockets, a laugh neither Bullock nor Bock chose to share, then cleared his throat earnestly. He produced an identification card and handed it to Bullock, who then passed it to Bock; it was from the police department, and it looked authentic�it listed the man's real name as James Stungton. "I'm a photographer," he announced, taking back his I.D. card from Bock and holding up his camera, presumably as proof. He must've worried that the detectives weren't getting it yet, because he then added "With the department!" with an enthusiasm that struck Bock as awfully ingratiating. Harvey must hate this guy already was Bock's first conscious thought after Mr. "Tate" said that. Interested on another level now, he turned and watched his partner deal with the photographer.

"This guy dies Friday morning," Bullock said, sounding like he was thinking outloud more than speaking to Tate, "and you show up here as police photographer with a camera today."

Tate shook his head. "No; I was here Friday afternoon when the crime scene squad was here."

Bullock shook his head. "No, you weren't. There was no pictures in the file for this case or the evidence box."

"Sure there were," Tate said, unfazed. "They were with the evidence, but I took 'em out when I decided to come back here to get some better shots." He held up the camera again. "On real film."

"Better shots," Bock repeated in disbelief.

Tate nodded. "With so many people around, it was impossible to get a half-decent photograph taken in here. All out of focus . . . and they told me I had to use a Polaroid, for God's sake . . ." He looked at Bullock and Bock, as if waiting for a reaction, which he didn't get. "I mean, come-on . . ."

Bullock rubbed his forehead with his hand and looked at the floor. "What about shots of the body, you fuckin' Einstein?"

"Oh!" Tate said, releasing his camera and opening his jacket. "Yeah, about those . . ." He reached into a pocket in the lining and pulled out a small stack of several Polaroids. "It was pretty stupid, taking those out, wasn't it?" He looked up briefly as he flipped through the pictures in his hand. "I mean, since I won't get to take those again . . ." He pulled three of the Polaroids out from the others and handed them to Bullock.

Bullock glanced at them briefly, then handed them over to Bock. As Tate was starting to stuff the rest of the photos back into his jacket, Bullock reached across and snatched them away. "I bet these'll be fine," he said harshly.

Tate pointed at the Polaroids in Bullock's hand and started to say something, but didn't get the opportunity.

"Get the fuck out," Bullock demanded, pointing at the door behind him with his thumb, before Tate could do anything more than open his mouth.

Tate took one step toward the door, then stopped, hesitated nervously. "I . . . came in through the back," he told Bullock, pointing behind him toward the kitchen. Bullock said nothing, just waited until Tate had turned and left through the back door in the kitchen.

Bullock stared through the kitchen doorway for a second or so, then looked at Bock, holding up the Polaroids. "He wanted some better shots," Bullock said with incredulity. He handed the pictures to Bock, who started to flip through them. The first three were various angles of the victim, one Benjamin Dillanfeld, sprawled on the floor in front of his closet, a huge shotgun wound in the center of his chest.

As Bock continued to look at the Polaroids, they walked through the door Tate had emerged from and entered the bedroom. Bock looked up as he stepped inside and saw the facing wall, which was windowless and stark white except for the words JESUS SAVES painted across it in huge, messy red letters, presumably of the victim's own blood. Bock looked down at his hands and saw that the next picture was an image of this very wall. "Think that's what they meant?" he asked.

Looking up, Bock saw Bullock shrug and say, "Yeah. I guess it must be."

Only lingering in the bedroom for a minute or so, Bock let Bullock back out into the small living room, and then into the kitchen. There was a stack of opened envelopes in a shallow basket near the center of the kitchen table, and Bock went right to it. He pointed Bullock to the basket as well, and Bullock immediately picked it up and spilled its contents out onto the table. Both men pulled up a chair and began to sort through the pile, one envelope at a time.

800 Block, Border Avenue
9:51 p.m.

It'd been a few days since Steph wore the Spoiler costume, but she always seemed to enjoy it the most after she'd been away from it for awhile. She likened it to the reason why it was better for Christmas to be only once a year, since you always enjoy something more if you don't get to do it as often. You learn to appreciate the treasured activity more in the absence of that activity. Or something.

She was learning to appreciate why she normally stuck to the suburbs, too; Bordertown was no place for any person with even the slightest instinct of self-preservation to be�even only part-time vigilantes knew that. But, Spoiler hadn't been left much of a choice; the human turd she'd followed here had maybe two-thousand dollars in his pocket that had previously resided in a safe inside one of the houses on Pritchard Street way back in Gotham Heights. It was probably all the money that family had, since it was a small house for that area, even compared to the other ones on Pritchard. Spoiler hadn't quite had the courage, or initiative, or whatever you'd want to call it, to foil (or try to foil) the theft as it happened, but letting this waste of cosmic space get away with it definitely didn't strike her as fair.

Her mistake in not confronting the thief sooner grew more and more apparent the closer she got to Bordertown. Seriously, this was a really, really bad neighborhood. Since she kept to the rooftops, Spoiler could only see the fronts of the buildings on one side of the street, but practically every structure she'd seen since crossing onto Border Avenue was condemned or looked like it should've been. Why were so many of these buildings still standing? Wasn't there such a thing as urban renewal? Normal cities knew what that was. . . . How much could it cost, tearing a building down, anyway? And, how did the city councilman, or whatever, for this district even get elected?

Spoiler had decided about half an hour ago that the thief's name was Odie. Nice and innocuous, she figured. (She'd briefly considered calling him "Garfield," but there was already a bad-guy with that name.) Odie had just crossed the street and walked up the steps of the building at 857 Border Avenue. At least she thought it was 857; it was hard to tell with this place. Spoiler stayed on the rooftop across the street and watched him walk inside, then looked around and started figuring out her way down.

863 Border Avenue

None of the streetlamps around here worked, so this was probably the darkest neighborhood in the city. Quentin sat down in a corner of the roof, pulled his short cape up around his shoulders, and settled in, knees drawn to his chest. It was a little chilly, but he figured he shouldn't be here too long. All he had to do was wait until Batman got to the roof of 861 over there, where Punny was waiting for him with his hands stuffed in his coat pockets like he was freezing to death, then go over there with them. He'd have to go over there himself, he figured; he'd have to be fast and smooth, but he'd have to go, since killing Batman wasn't a job that could get done from a distance. At least, it wasn't a job that could get done right from a distance.

Whenever Punny shifted his feet around nervously, like he did a hundred times a minute, Quentin could hear his shoes crunching in the gravel on the roof; once Batman showed up and they started talking, Quentin figured on having no problem hearing them. He thought he'd stay-put for a little bit, the first few seconds maybe, before trying to go for the kill. An immediate ambush would be something Batman would be ready for, probably; it had to happen to him almost constantly, afterall.

Quentin put his arms around his knees and slid his ass around a little in place to get a more comfortable feel to his seat. He looked over at the other roof and wondered what Punny must've been thinking.

Major Crimes Squadroom
Gotham City Police Headquarters
10:03 p.m.

"Oh, right; like I'm gonna go over there now. God, that is so obvious!"

Berkley smiled at Montoya and shook his head. "Yeah, but see, that's why you're going to go there, though! That's precisely it! Think about it: you just ripped-off sixty-thousand dollars, and every cop in the precinct has it on their boards to sniff you out. So, you wanna hide. So, what do you do? You wait for them to turn your house inside-out, then quietly move back in and keep your head down until you can get out of town!"

"He's got sixty-thousand bucks, he's probably way, way, way out of town by now!"

Berkley shook his head. "He's got it in thousand dollar bills, though. He can't spend that, not with everyone looking for him. He's gotta have a fence or something. . . . To get out of town with it, he'll have to've had the money to leave already, and the boys from Thirty-Six found seven thousand in his place when they searched it. That's his getting-out-of-town money."

Montoya looked at her partner for a moment, then blinked and grabbed on to what he was getting at. She nodded, understanding, she thought, although not without hesitation. "So, we put the seven thousand back in his house and . . . what, wait for him to come and get it?"

Berkley nodded.

"Why hasn't he come to get it by now, though? The job was pulled almost a week ago and they've had the place staked-out just in case ever since."

"You don't think he knows that? I mean, our guy's not a total moron�I can tell."

She folded her arms skeptically. "How can you tell?"

"The write-up on the search of his house mentioned that he had a veritable library of books by Jonathan Swift," Berkley replied. He said nothing else.

Montoya regarded him expectantly, then unfolded her arms when she realized he wasn't saying anything else. "So what?"

He leaned forward. "Do you know how few people read Swift, let alone really get him? Most people look at Gulliver's Travels as a lightweight children's fantasy, when it was really this incredibly scathing satirical allegory of eighteenth-century European politics."

"So . . . this guy reads a lot of Jonathan Swift . . . and is therefore smarter than the average thief?"

Berkley shrugged. "Look, it's just a hunch."

"A pretty lame hunch, if you ask me," Montoya said. Bullock and Bock walked in just then. "But, I think I agree with your strategy, anyway," she told Berkley, then stood up and looked at the new arrivals. "How's the hunt goin', fellas?"

Neither Bullock nor Bock bothered to remove their coats, just sat down at their desks for what would probably turn out to be only a few minutes. Bock reached into his coat and pulled out a stack of four envelopes, rubber-banded together, and dropped them on the desk. "That's what we've got."

Bullock must've seen the blank look on Montoya's face, because he looked at her and then at the envelopes and said, "That is what we were looking for, so . . ."

Montoya eyed the envelopes for a second, then looked at Bullock. "You find something in there that'll help you out, you think?"

Bock's eyes shrugged, and he leaned back. "Yeah, hopefully." He inhaled. "See, they find a clock-radio in the victim's house; it's stuck on seven o'clock. They take apart, find this . . . well, a whole load of electronic modifications and what-have-you's to make it stick."

"There's this little timer in there with the date of the murder set in it, so that the clock would work like normal before-hand," Bullock added, interrupting.

"Right," Bock picked up, "so these modifications are done, we figure, maybe even a few weeks before the man's killed." He took the envelopes and pulled the rubber band off. "Now, I figure that kind of work would take some technological expertise of some kind or another, so we get the idea of checking out to see if anyone from the phone company or what-have-you stopped in to see him in the last month."

Montoya nodded at the envelopes. "You find something?"

"Like a repair expense on the guy's phone bill or something?" Berkley asked, turned around on his chair to face the conversation now.

Bock grabbed one of the envelopes and pulled a sheet of paper from it. "We brought along his phone bills from last month and the month before, and a cable bill and a bill from a plumber, both from last month," he said, glancing at the other three envelopes. "This is the cable bill," he said, holding up the paper in his hand. "There's this thing on here, 'Upgrade Expense', dated about a week and a half before Mr. Dillanfeld, our victim, dies." Bock started to put the paper back in the envelope and glanced at Bullock across the desk. "We think we might have something, huh, Harvey?"

Bullock was leaning back in his chair away from the desk, looking down at his stomach, fingers laced together and resting there. "Could be," he mumbled, then stood. "I need a cup'a coffee. Anyone else?"

Everyone muttered their own versions of "No thanks" or "Got one," including Berkley, who held up his half-full mug as proof. Bullock, forgetting to take his mug with him from his desk, poured himself a paper cup of coffee and walked back to his desk.

"Anyway," Bock said, leaning toward his desk, grabbing for the phone, "I need to get someone from this cable company on the phone."

Bullock sat down and took a sip of his coffee. "Yeah, you go ahead and do that. Take your time, maybe I'll catch a nap." He slurped some more from the cup, then stopped and put the cup down, looking over at Montoya and shaking his head at himself. "Look at me�wanting to take a nap, and here I am drinking coffee."

857 Border Avenue
10:05 p.m.

Odie wasn't a very big guy. He looked a lot bigger when seen as a shape in near-total darkness, or from the roof of a building�that must've been it. If Spoiler had known what a . . . well, runt this guy was, she wouldn't have wasted so much time and effort trailing him all the way from freakin' Gotham Heights. Anyway, once he had walked into this building, the hard part lay in finding him in near-total darkness while still being quiet enough so he wouldn't know anyone else was around.

It was hard, yeah, but she got the job done. She drug Odie up a flight up a flight of steps (thankful that he'd chosen to put his hideout, or whatever, in a room on the next-to-the-top floor) and out onto the roof, all tied up with no place for his butt to go but on a hard jailhouse cot. The money was down in Odie's room. Spoiler decided she would call the cops about Odie, just leave him here with a note pinned to his shirt about the money. Cops hated this section of town, though, she remembered. Odie'd probably starve to death and decompose before anyone finally got around to rounding him up. And, the family in Gotham Heights would give up on the stolen money and everyone'd take extra jobs, or something. Yeah, bad idea. She rethought the situation for a minute or so, then decided to go ahead and leave Odie here, but take the money back with her and either leave it at a police station on the way back or return it to the house herself. Either way, the stolen goods would find their way home, and that was the important thing; dragging their thief out of Bordertown to some police house was not a priority, nor something Spoiler was even considering trying to do.

Still, lugging him back downstairs might not be a bad idea; this place here didn't strike Spoiler as being over-sturdy. Thinking back, there was a dubious lack of roof support inside.

She knelt down at Odie to check his hands and feet, see if he was tied tightly enough to stay bound until she could get him back inside. While she did this, something caught the corner of her eye. Spoiler turned her head and looked up the block; something was moving over there.

863 Border Avenue

Batman had arrived over at 861. "What?" he immediately asked Lester Punny, in that gruff and impatient tone that Quentin couldn't imagine he hadn't been born with.

"Things are changing," Quentin heard Punny say to him. Punny told him, "The impostor Batman, everything. It's not about the Dominguez gang or anything like that. The focus is shifting. The focus has shifted."

"To what?" Batman demanded.

Quentin stood up and leapt across the chasm to the roof of 861. In mid-air, he heard Punny's answer: "You."

Batman was too good to have not seen Quentin coming; he turned to meet the challenge before Quentin's boots hit the roof. The difference this time was the almost total darkness. Yes, Batman could see, but, from the greenish tint on those white lenses in his mask, he was depending almost completely on night-vision. And, night-vision wasn't perfect. He had to duck and dodge a lot of offense, and pick and choose his spots, but Quentin managed to get in a few well-placed shots. Punny, for his part, stayed back as far as he could from the action.

Inevitably, in less than a minute Batman had essentially taken charge of the fight, and Quentin found himself doubled over by a harsh kick to the abdomen and nearly driven to his knees by a sharp elbow to the back. He let himself drop to the ground, then sprang up and back, flipping over in mid-air and landing on his feet. This left Batman totally unfazed and still coming at Quentin, only a few feet in front of him. A glance behind himself found Quentin very nearly at the edge of the roof. He did one more backflip, this time across the gap to the roof of the building at 859. He landed hard, and immediately did a backward roll to ease it. Rolling to his feet, he tore off his cape and waited for Batman to come.

Come he did, taking only a few steps and then leaping across the gap to the roof of 859. As he leapt, his cape billowed out around him and in the darkness he lost any shape he'd had before. Before hitting the roof, his body seemed to disappear into the near-black that surrounded him, the only sign of his presence to Quentin at all, the very faint green glow of his night-vision lenses. Quentin saw the green glow of the eyes when it was almost too late and tried to dive to the side. He avoided a harder blow, but still caught a glancing kick to the side his body, almost knocking the air out of his lungs. He hit the ground the rolled, but when he stood back up Batman was there, driving a fist up into his ribs from beneath, then punching him hard and flush across the jaw. Reeling from the punch, he felt Batman grab him by the wrist, and before he knew it he was being thrown over Batman's shoulder and landing on his back on the roof. He felt the breath rush from his body and instinctively rolled to the right and jumped to his feet.

Admitting to himself that he was getting a bit desperate, Quentin found the green eyes in the dark and directed a fast reverse roundhouse kick toward them. He missed, his leg was caught, and his other leg was pulled out from beneath him a second later. Quentin managed to catch himself on his hands and spin hard enough to his left to break away from Batman and roll to a standing position again. He was at the edge of the roof again�how narrow was this building?

Batman wasn't charging�Quentin didn't think he ever charged�but he was approaching at a fast step. Quentin spun around, his back to Batman, dropped down on his hands, thrust his legs out behind him and scissored Batman tightly around the middle. Quentin immediately rolled forward, flipping his legs over his head with as much force as he could, throwing Batman across the gap toward the roof of 857 Border Avenue.

Batman was about to fall all over this weak roof, and Spoiler had no idea what to do. She grabbed onto Odie, operating out of some maternal instinct that she didn't even try to understand at the moment, and hoped for the best. It had looked like Batman was thrown from the other roof, and there didn't look like there was a whole lot he could do to control his fall. He tucked and looked to be trying to roll forward in mid-air to land on his hands, not that it mattered. The force of the throw put him right next to the crumbling brick housing around the door to the roof stairs. He smacked into the roof at the foot of the bricks, and the roof gave way. Batman fell through the crumbling roof, and Spoiler and Odie, along with the bricks of the stairway entrance, fell after him as the roof collapsed outwardly.

They fell through two floors before they finally stopped at what must've been the ground floor (Spoiler was almost certain this was only a three story building). Spoiler felt a little guilty about thinking it, but she was fortunate in that Odie had fallen in before her, and the path of her fall was almost exactly the same as his, so the impact of the two floors they crashed through hadn't been nearly as bad as it could have been. There was dust all around, but as it started to dissipate, Spoiler saw what she had to deal with. Batman had landed on his stomach, and it looked like most of the bricks had fallen on his legs. Plus, a big hole had been opened in the floor, looking down into the basement, Spoiler assumed, and Batman's waist was almost exactly on the edge of it. He hung down in the hole, and it was impossible to tell if he was conscious, or unconscious, or what. It looked like he was pretty uncomfortable, whatever he was.

Odie was dead. Or, as good as dead, at the very least�the bricks from the stair entrance had landed on him, too, on his head. Spoiler could see his legs sticking out from beneath the pile of broken stone, and there was a pool of blood slowly beginning to spread from beneath, where Odie's head must've been. Spoiler looked at him and wondered what his real name was; even though he was a thief and a scumbag and a dirty son of a bitch, it would've been nice to know.

The dust continued to clear, and when Spoiler looked up from Odie she saw that someone else was down here, too.

Quentin was such a fuckin' idiot. Really, he was. Look before you leap�look the fuck before you leap�how old are kids when they first learn that? Four? Five? What a fuckin' idiot. If he died or ended up crippled or Batman, that son of a bitch fuckin' cocksucker made it out of here alive because of this, Quentin couldn't see ever forgiving himself.

When he grabbed Batman with his legs and catapulted him over to the roof of 857 Border Avenue, Quentin's momentum carried him over the edge of 859. He fell, must've been ten feet, and grabbed onto a rusted old fire escape to stop himself. From there, he pushed off and jumped across the alley, grabbed onto another fire escape rail that hung off of the other building. No problem so far. Then, like a fuckin' brain-dead gorilla, he perches himself on the fire escape rail, jumps up and grabs onto the roof ledge, and throws himself up onto the roof, not even looking to see what had happened up there. Fell right down into the fuckin' hole and now here he was at the bottom with everyone else, and maybe with a broken leg, too.

Mentally, he kicked himself in the ass. Hard. And, he made a note to get someone to do it for real, twice as hard, as soon as all this was over. Goddammit, how fuckin' stupid could he have been? He couldn't even believe it. Batman looked to be in pretty bad shape, so at least there was that, but . . . fuck.

As far as she could tell, Spoiler wasn't hurt from the fall. She had Odie to thank for that, she supposed. There would be plenty of time to turn that over and over in her mind, though, once she got out of this place. And, she was getting out of this place, that much had already been decided. She wasn't going alone, either.

She slid over right next to where Batman lay half-swallowed by the floor and tapped him firmly on the back. He didn't move, so she tapped him again. He still didn't move, so she opened her hand and reached down into the hole and slapped him hard between his shoulders. He still didn't move, but after a few seconds Spoiler heard a groggy, annoyed voice ask, "Who is that?"

"It's . . . Spoiler," she spoke down into the hole. "Are you hurt?"

Batman was silent. Spoiler assumed he was thinking it over, mentally assessing the situation. "My legs may be crushed," he eventually answered flatly. "I'm not certain."

Motion and the sound of sliding debris made Spoiler look up from Batman to see that whoever that was on the other side of the hole was sliding up from his back to a sitting position. " . . . fuckin' gonna be hurt," the man said. His right hand reached across the front of him and grabbed at something on his other side. That right hand had a gun in it when Spoiler saw it again a moment later.

"He's got a gun," Spoiler whispered, with alarm, at Batman.

"Run," Batman ordered her immediately, quickly adding, "Find Robin."

Spoiler stood and the gun in the man's hand went off. She clutched her thigh and sank to the rubble-filled floor, crying out in raw pain. She squeezed her eyes shut as they started to fill with tears and she fell backward, into a pile of brick debris. She opened her eyes, crying, and looked over at the guy with the gun: he was raising it again, pointing it down the hole at Batman. Spoiler gasped sharply. "No!" she yelled at him, helpless to stop him and knowing it.

Quentin pulled the trigger and nothing happened. He pulled the trigger again and nothing happened. He pulled the trigger over and over and over again and all that happened was a meaningless clicking noise. The fucking gun wasn't firing. "Fuck!" Quentin yelled, disgusted. He smashed the gun repeatedly into the rubble on the floor around him, frustrated and even more pissed than he had been just a few minutes ago. "Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck fuck FUCK!!"

He grabbed the gun at its muzzle and whipped it as hard as he could at Batman. It hit him in the middle of the back, and couldn't have even hurt all that much. Quentin heard the gun clatter to the floor of the basement below, and thanked heaven it didn't go off, because if it had . . . oh, Jesus fuckin' Christ, if it had . . .

Something squeaked, and Quentin looked up abruptly at the doorway on the other side of the room. There was a shape moving out there, a shadow of a man, a slight, thin looking man. Fuck it�how many tall, skinny, trenchcoated (it looked like they were wearing a trenchcoat) gang members were there in Bordertown? "Punny?" Quentin called out to the shadow in the other room. "Punny, that you, Punny?!"

The shadow came closer, and Lester Punny's voice answered back, "Yeah, it's me. . . . What the hell happened?"

"Punny! Get in here!" Quentin was yelling at the top of his lungs now, urgent and excited. "You got a gun? You got a gun, Punny?!" Punny walked in the room and his mouth fell open for a second as he saw the holes in the floor and ceiling, and all the brick and debris around. Quentin was pointing frantically, insistently at Batman as he hung in the hole. "You got a gun, Punny?! Shoot him!! Hurry up and shoot that motherfucker!! Come-on!!"

Punny stopped a few steps inside the door and just looked, first at Quentin and then at Batman and then back at Quentin, totally helpless and confused. He held his arms out and shook his head. "I don't carry a gun . . ."

Quentin's eyes caught on fire beneath his mask and his mouth hung wide open for ten stunned seconds. "Oh . . . you fuck! . . . You stupid-ignorant-son-of-a-bitch-fuckin'-FUCK!! No, no, no!!" His hand lashed out to the side and grabbed at a piece of the debris, but it was only a hunk of plaster and it just crumbled in his hands. He grabbed at the rubble again and came up with a big chunk of brick this time, and he whipped it at Punny's head as hard as he could. Punny turned away and put his hands up instinctively, but the brick still hit him in the side of the head. He gave a yell and kept his hand pressed against his temple, grimacing and inhaling sharply every few breaths.

"Look, just get the fuck outta here and go tell somebody what we got here!" Quentin yelled, waving Punny back out the door now. "Fuck�Go!!�Go tell 'em what we got here!!" Punny nodded and turned toward the door. "Whoa, wait!" Quentin called before Punny'd even taken a full step. "You know Puck the Fuck?"

Punny could just as well have been staring at a little gray alien after that.

"You know who�Puck the Fuck�it's a code. You know who that's a code for?"

Punny just shook his injured head.

"What the fuck kinda snitch� . . . Look, just go back to the� . . . back to where we were earlier, tell the girl out front that you want to talk to Puck, okay? Puck. She oughta know. And, tell Puck, when you see him, that we got Batman�tell him what we got and where we are!" Punny turned around and started out again. "And hurry the fuck up!" Quentin yelled at him as he left the room, "I think I got a broken leg!"

Driving East on Scarborough Avenue
10:11 p.m.

Bullock tapped on the overhead light in the car and squinted at the sheet of paper in his hands. After doing that for a minute, he slapped Bock's arm gently. Bock was watching the road, and couldn't really give any acknowledgment. Bullock slapped his arm again, and Bock said, "Yeah, what?"

"I can't read your writing�can you read your writing?" Bullock asked, holding the paper over in front of Bock's face, so much so that he almost lost sight of the road.

Bock pushed the paper aside, narrowing his eyes. "What can't you see?"

"This guy's name here�what else is on here?"

"That's 'Richard Levinson'," Bock answered. "Why?"

Bullock folded up the paper and put it in his jacket. "How am I supposed to talk to this guy without knowing his name?"

Bock turned to Bullock quickly, staring at him in disbelief. "When did you change your interview technique?" Bock's partner just looked at him. "This guy's a suspect in a brutal crime, I mean. Since when do you even bother to learn a skel's name, let alone use it in an interrogation?"

"Fuck you, I use their names all the time," Bullock protested.

"Since when have we ever interrogated a suspect named Son of a Bitch?"

Bullock gave Bock a brief disbelieving look of his own, then turned and shook his head, seeming disappointed. "You need to start paying more attention, Hardback . . ."

Bock just drove, muttering a wry, "Uh-huh" as he did.

857 Border Avenue
10:13 p.m.

Batman, hanging down in the hole, had been muttering something off and on for the last minute or so. Spoiler couldn't hear what he was saying, even when she got right next to the hole and listened. Of course, she was in a whole lot of pain, and her hands were starting to tremble, probably from loss of blood or something, so maybe that had something to do with it. Batman stopped saying whatever he was saying and gave what sounded like a frustrated sigh.

Spoiler started to withdraw from the hole.

"Come here."

"What?" Spoiler asked, gingerly moving back to the edge.

"Can you hear me from where you are?" Batman asked.

Spoiler nodded, then, realizing Batman couldn't see her, quickly said, "Yes. I can."

"The two-way radio is inoperable," he told her. "I can't call for help."

"So, what do we do?" she asked. "Should I start digging you out, or something?"

"My legs may be broken," he told her, in a flat voice that sounded like he might as well have been telling her something completely unimportant. "Can you reach my belt?" he asked.

She could, if she slid away the debris, which she started to do. "Gimme a sec here," she said as she started to push aside the smaller plaster and brick pieces that were piled up around Batman's waist.

"If you don't stop doing that, I'm gonna crawl over there and I'm gonna fuckin' kill you," the man sitting on the other side of the hole in the floor told her. When Spoiler ignored him and began to clear away the debris even faster, he yelled, "Stop!!" And she did, abruptly.

Batman's hands rose up from the darkness of the hole and grabbed onto the edges of the floor. He pulled himself up out of the hole and held himself there, very tenuously, so he could look at the man on the other side. "Do you want to get out of this building, or do you want to stay here and die?"

"Hey, I'm not the one who's gotta worry about getting out alive," the man responded, putting his hand to his chest. "You and her are the ones gettin' drug outta here."

"Do you really trust that man?" Batman asked sharply.

"He was trustworthy enough to help me fuck you over," the man insisted. "That's good enough for me."

"He's still alive," Spoiler told the man across the hole in her best smart-ass teenage voice. "That can't have been part of the plan."

"Yeah, and neither were you, either," he shot back. "Smart little bitch. It's not gonna save your ass, though. Worse comes to worse, I'll crawl over there and kill you myself. Don't think I'm fuckin' around, either. I used to make my living killing people. With my bare fuckin' hands."

"Ignore him," Batman told Spoiler. With another person, that might've been something said to calmly reassure; Batman made it sound like a direct order. It worked, though; Spoiler got right back to work clearing away the debris. While she worked, Batman told her, "When you can reach the fifth segment after the wider plate on my left side, open it."

Spoiler found what looked like the segment in the belt he was talking about. She had to play with it for a second, but finally figured out that it opened on a little hinge at the bottom. She hooked her finger on the top edge of it and pulled it open. A dull-silver cylindrical device with a little light imbedded in one end was attached, what looked like magnetically, to the inside of the little segment plate. Spoiler took it into her hand and slid closer to the hole. She held it in front of Batman's face. "Is this what you wanted me to get?"

Batman nodded. "Hold it between your thumb and index finger and push it," he instructed.

Spoiler did, and the little light came on, glowing a steady, faint green for about three seconds, then starting to flash, about once per second. "What now?"

"Just hold onto it."

The guy on the other side of the hole was on his feet! And lunging! Spoiler rolled out of the way just before he would've fallen on her, then pushed off with her good leg and scooted back away from him as fast as she could. The guy did act like he had a broken leg. Instead of trying to stand back up, he just rolled over and sat up, then took a swipe at Spoiler, much too far from her now to even come close.

"Get rid of it," Batman told her insistently. "Now. Throw it up through the hole."

He must've meant the hole in the ceiling that they'd come through�hell, that they'd made. Spoiler tossed the little cylinder gently once in her hand, then lobbed it high up into the hole. It came down in an arc, and she heard it hit the floor above them. She then looked at the man, put her thumbs up to her ears and waggled her fingers tauntingly at him, chanting "Nyeh-nyeh-nyeh-nyeh-nyeh" as childishly as she could muster given the situation. He couldn't see her sticking her tongue out at him through her mask, but Spoiler figured the message was received nonetheless.

That smart-ass little cunt.

Avian Paradise Casino
10:38 p.m.

Groverton had his own office, on the floor below Oswald's penthouse. It was smaller, about one-fourth the size of Cobblepot's loft, but it had a window with a nice view, and plenty of room for a desk, a fold-out couch, and an entertainment center. There was a bathroom adjacent, too. Excepting Oswald's penthouse, it was the best office anyone in the building had�it did take up one quarter of an entire floor�so, Groverton never seriously considered complaining.

Quentin hadn't checked in yet. If Groverton didn't have something to tell Oswald in the next twenty minutes or so, he anticipated having one very irritable employer for approximately the next six weeks.

Feeling that half-bottle of wine he'd drunk earlier starting to want to go somewhere, Groverton got up from behind his desk and walked into the bathroom. Although the steady gurgle of piss-on-water was louder than usual this time (he drank a lot of wine in a short span of time), he still heard his office door open. A second later, a woman's voice asked, "Groverton? Are you in the bathroom?"

"Yes," Groverton answered, finishing up. "What is it?" He zipped and turned around to quickly wash his hands.

"Lester Punny is here to see you," the woman said.

Groverton stopped washing his hands and left the bathroom immediately, shaking the excess water onto the carpeted floor as he emerged into the office. Alexandra, the receptionist working at the front desk on the casino floor downstairs, was there, and Lester Punny was right behind her, looking extremely anxious. "You're Puck the Fuck?" Punny asked, looking at Groverton with incredulity.

Oh, God, why does he call me that? . . .

Groverton gave Alexandra a glance that told her to leave, and, once she did, he motioned for Punny to come closer. The two men stood inches apart, and Groverton spoke to him in a low, intimate whisper. "What's happened?" he asked earnestly.

"Your man's trapped in a caved-in building on Border Avenue," Punny said. "So is Batman, and someone else in a costume who I never seen before."

"Are they going anywhere? Are they hurt?" Groverton asked, eyes widening.

Punny shook his head. "Your guy shot at something before I got there, but I think they're all still alive. Batman looks in pretty bad shape, though�like, half-buried. Your guy was yelling about a broken leg, too."

Groverton went around behind his desk and picked up his phone in a hurry. As he punched the speed-dial button for Oswald's penthouse and waited for it to ring, he looked up at Punny. "How long ago was this?"

Punny shrugged. "Twenty minutes, half an hour . . ."

"All right. You go home. I might want to talk to you later, though, so don't disappear."

Punny nodded and backed up to the door, then turned and slipped outside. Just as the door closed behind him, Groverton heard a pick-up on the phone-line. "Oswald?" he asked, not waiting for an answer.

"Yes?" Cobblepot replied, sounding worried already. "What? What is it?" There was a trace of something hopeful in his voice now.

"I just talked to Punny; things didn't go as planned�but, I think it's still salvageable."

"Define 'didn't go as planned'," Oswald said; Groverton could see his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"Quentin is trapped beneath a collapsed building, along with Batman, and some unidentified third party," Groverton explained, as calmly as he could. "They're all still alive, but Batman might be seriously injured, and Quentin was complaining about a broken leg when Punny left them."

Groverton heard Oswald sigh heavily, wearily, as if he felt what he'd hoped would be this night's success slipping away. "Very well, call on Sir Edmund and see if he can possibly have Michael Tihiro go to this collapsed building. If that fails, call me back, and I'll see what I can do." The line went dead before another second had passed. Groverton held down the button for a few seconds, then released it and started to dial.

2017 Miami Avenue
10:43 p.m.

"No way. Not on this earth."

"Look, would you stop? Just knock it back."

"Fuck you."

"Would you just do it? Christ, you're such a baby."

"It's a glass of your fuckin' piss."

"Yeah . . . that's sort of the point . . . You know? You see? Like, they use wine, we use piss? Like that. That's the point. . . . Now, come-on and just drink it."

"No. . . . Fuck you."

Bock turned from the door and looked at Bullock and whispered, "This is unique, isn't it?"

Bullock's eyebrows jumped, and he nodded affirmatively. "I wonder which one is which," he whispered back. Not waiting for Bock to offer his theory, Bullock reached up and knocked on the door five times, hard and loud. The conversation inside stopped immediately.

"Who's that?" one of the voices from inside asked after almost ten seconds of total silence.

"Gotham P-D," Bullock announced. "Detectives. Open this door."

No response. Then, after another long silence, "Just� . . . yeah, just give me a second."

Bock pulled his walkie-talkie. "Radner, watch the window."

"Got it," came the crackly answer a moment later.

"Open the door now," Bullock demanded loudly as he pounded the bottom of his fist against the door another half-dozen times.

"Look, I'm coming, all right?" the same voice from inside the apartment answered.

Bock pushed his coat to the side and drew his gun, and Bullock did the same thing a moment later. Their walkie-talkies crackled to life, and Officer Radner outside told them, "We've got one coming out the window."

"All right," Bock acknowledged to Radner, "grab him when he gets down."

The apartment door opened, revealing a young white man with shoulder-length brown hair and a thick beard. Bullock shoved the door open completely and pushed past him into the apartment, while Bock put his gun away, grabbed this man at the door and wrenched his hands behind his back to cuff him. "Tell me your name," Bock demanded.

"Todd Arlen," the man replied in a strained voice. Bock tightened the cuffs around his wrists as far as they would go, coaxing a pained groan from the man's mouth.

"You're under arrest, Todd," Bock told him, "in connection with the murder of Ben Dillanfeld."

Bullock had gone through a door into another room of the apartment. He stalked out now, pulling his walkie-talkie to his mouth. "You got him outside?" he barked, then held the walkie-talkie up and listened for a moment.

"[crackle]. . . No."

Bock looked over at Bullock tensely. "Didn't he come down?" Bullock asked demandingly.

"No�he went up. To the roof."

Bullock rolled his eyes. "Didn't you follow him up?"

Another short crackle. "Yeah, but nothing yet."

"He made it to the roof?"

"He made it to the roof, yeah."

"Okay, just stay-put." Bullock returned the walkie-talkie to his belt and walked toward Bock and Todd Arlen. He reached for Arlen's cuffed hands and took them from Bock, then looked at Bock and nodded toward the window. "Go up there and see what the hell's going on," Bullock said. Bock went to the window.

"I don't get read my rights," Bock heard Arlen ask Bullock.

"You know your rights?" Bullock asked him in reply.

"Yeah, I think."

"Sure as hell don't need me to tell you, then, do you?"

"I guess not."

"Then shut the fuck up and move your feet."

Bock climbed out the window onto the fire escape. He looked above him and saw no one on the wrought-iron stairs leading to the roof. He started to climb up, nonetheless. When he reached the fire escape landing of the top floor, it took a short hop up from the safety railing to grab onto the edge of the roof ledge. Bock pulled himself halfway onto the roof, and one of the uniformed officers who had climbed the fire escape already helped pull him up the rest of the way. Bock walked toward the other side of the roof, moving a few steps ahead of the officer who had helped him. The street and sidewalk on the other side of the building was empty. Another officer who was shining his flashlight down at the alley below the other side of the roof looked across at Bock and shook his head.

"All right," Bock said, reaching for his walkie-talkie, "forget it, he's gone." He held up the walkie-talkie. "He's gone, Harvey. We got nothin' up here." Bock walked back to the edge of the roof where he'd climbed up and slid down over the edge onto the fire escape. He stood there, leaning with his free hand on the safety rail, looking down at Bullock and the other officers on the street.

"Yeah, okay," Bullock told him through the walkie-talkie. "We got one, at least."

Bock turned and started down the iron stairs. "Hope he's the right one," Bock said before he put the walkie-talkie back on his belt.

857 Border Avenue
11:02 p.m.

"You move one more rock offa him, and I'm throwing you head-first in that goddamn hole," the guy with the broken leg warned Spoiler.

Batman was still holding himself horizontal by grasping the edges of the hole. He was showing no physical signs of strain, but it couldn't have been comfortable. Knowing that this other, rather obnoxious guy was sitting on the floor a few feet behind her, Spoiler had been trying her best to be discreet about removing the debris from on top of Batman's legs, but that was a hard thing to be discreet about. Just now was the fourth time the guy had complained about Spoiler helping Batman, and she'd completely ignored him both the second and third time. In another minute or so, she'd have all the brick and concrete pieces cleared away from Batman's legs, and he'd at least be able to drag himself up and sit down, since his legs were probably destroyed.

Speaking of legs, Spoiler's was really starting to kill her now. She hadn't been able to bring herself to actually look at it since that loudmouth over there shot her, but it couldn't be a pretty sight. It hurt . . .

Good guess�in another minute, Batman had been able to pull himself out from beneath the now-smaller pile of roof rubble. He did so by dragging himself forward until his legs hung down in the hole in the floor, then pushing back and up so that he sat on the boards at the edge of the hole. He slid back away from the hole and sat there between Spoiler and the loudmouth with the broken leg. Spoiler noticed, after a second, that Batman seemed to be subtly trying to get a look at her injured leg. "What?" she asked, sliding closer to him tentatively. "Want to have a look?"

Spoiler moved close enough to let Batman lean down sideways and inspect her wounded leg, which she still didn't look at herself. She winced, then gave a yell when he touched the wound, but he only did so for a second or so, and it didn't hurt all that much. "It's not bad," Batman told her.

"It's not?"

"The bullet only grazed your thigh," he said. He waited a few seconds, then added, "You shouldn't need to go to the hospital." Spoiler breathed a sigh of relief; she hadn't even thought about that yet, but what if the gunshot had been worse? What the hell would she do, then? How would she explain that one at the house? "Be certain to clean it thoroughly, once you return home," Batman advised her.

Spoiler looked past Batman and saw that the jerk-off with the broken leg was watching the exchange with disbelief (or something�who knows what he looked like under the mask). "Uh, . . . she's not going home. That sink in yet? You," he told Batman, pointing right at his head, "are gonna fuckin' die tonight! I'd kill your ass right now, if I wasn't sitting on a bad leg."

Batman didn't look to be paying the guy much attention. The loudmouth looked away from Batman for a bit, then turned back suddenly and lunged at him! Batman was ready for him (God, was he ever not ready for someone? Other than when he fell through the roof, of course . . .), and caught him in both arms as he hit. The guy's hands went around Batman's neck in what had to be a desperation move as Batman grabbed him at the sides and forced them to roll over until Batman was on top. Looking down at the guy, Batman's hand clamped onto one of his wrists and wrenched that hand from his neck, bending it back behind the guy's head. The next instant, Batman drew back with his free hand and drove it down�hard�into the guy's face. Spoiler had to look away at the moment of impact, but when she looked back, the guy's nose was obviously broken, blood gushing out of his nostrils, through his mask. Batman rolled off of him, and he sat up immediately, peeling his mask up halfway and holding his hands under his bloodied nose. He looked over hatefully at Batman and said, "You cocksuckin' dirty son of a bitch . . ." When he said "bitch," he spat blood.

A crunch of something at the door, a shoe on crushed stone, probably, got Spoiler to look up suddenly. A figure was framed in the doorway for an instant, then moved to the side as it stepped into the room. Its shape was impossibly familiar�that of a man dressed in a bat costume, ears rising to a point on either side above the head, body draped in a cloak. Superficially, at least, the suit was a duplicate of the one Batman wore. And, the man wearing it was walking over here.

Spoiler stood up to face him, although Batman reached his arm out to stop her. She stood in front of him, and almost immediately took a vicious kick to the stomach, followed by a swift backhand smack to the jaw that knocked her down. The guy in the Batman suit turned from Spoiler and looked down toward his feet at the real thing, lying beneath him on the floor, prone. Not prone for long: Batman spun around from a position lying on his back to his stomach, caught himself on his hands, and used them to spring up and forward. He grabbed the fake-Batman around the knees and muscled him to the floor from there, crawling up his torso toward his masked head with amazing speed. Batman pinned the impostor's hands down to the floor and delivered a nasty looking headbutt to his face, one that should have broken this guy's nose, too.

"Batman!" Spoiler yelled, alarmed, looking at the door again. An Asian man stood there, decked-out entirely in black, including what looked like black leather gloves on his hands, and a black scarf tied around the bottom half of his face that made him look like a makeshift ninja. Batman looked up from his impostor, and the man in the doorway raised a small silver handgun in his right hand. Batman braced his hands up under him and looked like he was ready to move again, but Spoiler ran in front of him before he did.

"Move!" Batman barked at her, but she didn't. Not until the loudmouth with the freshly-broken nose reached across the floor and pulled her feet out from beneath her, that is. Rolling over and looking up immediately, she saw the gun leveled at Batman again, and then the strong hand still gripping one of her ankles like a vice. Helpless.

"Robin!" Spoiler yelled, looking up at the hole in the ceiling. And, it was; he dropped through the hole holding onto a long cord and swung onto the floor between Batman and the gun. Spoiler couldn't see very well now, but she heard the gun go off, and Robin had managed to wrestle it away from the ninja, or whatever he was, a moment later. Robin took a lightning-quick kick to the side of the head from the guy in black and stumbled back, holding his head. The black-dressed man just surveyed the room for a moment, then looked down at the loudmouth with the broken nose and offered him his hand. The loudmouth took it, and was pulled to his feet and then onto the man's shoulders. They left, quickly, back through the doors. Spoiler lost sight of them in the darkness, but was almost certain she heard car doors slamming shut.

"Oh my God, are you all right?" Robin asked as he knelt down near Batman, still shaking his head from the kick he took. He looked at Odie's legs sticking out from beneath the pile of rubble, which were slightly more covered than they had been before Spoiler started digging Batman out. "What happened?" He looked around for a second. "I mean, it's obvious what happened . . . but, what happened?"

Batman said nothing, just offered Robin his arm. "My legs may be broken," he told Robin calmly as he helped him up. "She took a minor grazing to the thigh. It's nothing serious."

"You were shot?" Robin asked Spoiler, looking at her with sudden concern. "You're sure you're all right?"

Spoiler shrugged. She stood up, putting real weight on the leg for the first time; it wasn't too bad. Hurt like nothing should ever hurt, but at least she could walk. She wasn't bleeding hardly at all anymore, either, she noticed. "It hurts," she told Robin, "but he said I should be okay."

"It's nothing serious," Batman repeated.

Spoiler helped Robin help Batman drag himself outside. Robin's car was parked in the alley next to the building. Batman was stepping and putting weight on his right leg, so that one must've been at least partially okay. As they went, Batman told Robin to get in touch with the police, apprise them of the situation here, advise them that one man was dead, one was unconscious and injured, and three others who had been present fled the scene.

"How are we doing this, though?" Robin asked as they reached the car. "Two seats, three people."

Batman pushed himself away from them and backed up against the wall of the building. He leaned there as he asked, "Is the other car on its way?"

Robin nodded. "It should be, yeah."

"Give me your remote," Batman ordered, holding out his hand. Robin opened the driver's side of his car and reached in, coming back with something in his hand that looked like a really souped-up graphing calculator with a lighted screen. It looked like it had a map on it, but Spoiler didn't get a real good look. Batman looked at the thing's screen for a second or so, then clipped the device onto his wrecked belt and settled back against the building, standing on his good leg. "It should be here momentarily. You take her home."

"Sure you don't want us to wait for the car to get here?" Robin asked, indicating Spoiler with a glance.

"It should be here momentarily," Batman repeated. "I'll be fine."

Robin nodded at him, and put his arm around Spoiler's waist and started to lead her around to the passenger side of the car. She stopped him after a few steps and looked back at Batman. "You're sure you'll be okay here? By yourself?"

"Yes," Batman said after not saying anything for a few seconds. "Go home now, young lady."

Spoiler let Robin take her around to the other side of the car, then. She got in, and in another minute or so, they'd backed out onto Border Avenue, leaving Batman alone in the alley, and were on their way back to civilization. Comparatively, anyway.

Can I cover a fuck-up or what? See that first GCPD scene? I can cover a fuck-up, man. Fifty-Two and Seventeen and all that shit . . . I fucked up. I don't know where I got Seventeen from. I think what I did was confuse Ben's number of years on the force with his old precinct number. I'll admit it here. Still, it let me concoct a pretty interesting story to explain the inconsistency, didn't it? That's good, I guess. Makes things a little quirkier, sort of. And, my friends, that is just how much I care about continuity. Baby. Anyway, the anti-Christian adventures of Mr. Todd Arlen continue in our next episode. So, hey�stay tuned. Baby. And, while you're staying tuned, email me about this one. I'd appreciate it. Thanks a fuckin' ton. Really.

By the way, just a quick programming note: Before I start work on Episode Fifteen, I'm gonna write the third installment of my Christmas Night series (Which isn't very aptly named, it occurs to me, since the stories take place on Christmas Eve. Ah, well . . . I'll just rename it!) That shouldn't take too long, and it'll probably be the funniest, most twisted, and therefore, most entertaining of those Christmas stories so far. So, watch for that.