“BRO!”
Tim jumped up and hugged him. “You’re
back! I forgot you were home today.
But what’re you doing here? Shouldn’t you be jet lagged or
something?”
“Probably,”
Dick answered, “With the hours we keep, what’s the difference.”
“Yeah,
I guess,” Tim laughed. “So,
you’re back.”
Dick
smiled but didn’t say anything. Tim
pressed on.
“Was there… Selina said at the wedding your old college buds were planning
something. So, was there
a prank?”
Dick
laughed. “God, I forgot what the
rumor mill was like in this town. YES.
Stevo found out we spent the wedding night at the bridal suite in the
Carlyle…”
“And?”
Tim prompted.
“Sleigh
bells in the box spring.”
Tim
cackled.
“Yes,
HA HA HA like laughing boy says. Now
that you’ve got a scoop before all the other old hens, you gotta give back.
What have I missed?”
“Nothing
that entertaining. There’s Bruce
& Selina’s latest spat: seems
she referred to the shrimp arrabbiata at D’Annunzio’s as ‘better than sex’
and he decided to take it personally.”
“He
tends to take metaphors literally.”
“Dick,
c’mon, you tell me. You were
there when they used to be, well y’know, like they used to be. Batman and
Catwoman. Surely worse things were said than that.”
“No
comment.”
“Oh,
C’MON!”
“Tim,
I can’t. I’m sworn to secrecy.”
“BRO,
you can’t hold out here, Robin to Robin, what went down?”
“Bruce
said sooner or later you would ask about this, and if I said anything but ‘no
comment,’ there would be retribution.”
“He’s
bluffing.”
“We
were in the trophy room when he said it. He
was holding Selina’s first cat-o-nine tails and my old Robin shorts. I’m
not taking the chance.”
“If
you don’t tell me, I won’t give you the 411 on what happened with Poison Ivy and
Two-Face.”
“Flytrap
e morte. Already heard.”
“Nuts.”
“I
am married to Oracle, buddy.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Dinah
emailed her.”
Tim
looked thoughtful. “Yeah… What you said
before about the rumor mill, can I bounce something off you?
I don’t know if I’m imagining things, and I don’t want to take it to
Bruce if it’s something dumb.”
Dick
nodded, becoming serious, and Tim continued.
“Well,
a bunch of us from Brentwood are starting internships, and the guys from my
study group decided to get together like it was any other school project,
compare notes ’n stuff.”
Dick
chuckled, and Tim became defensive.
“Okay,
mostly we just eat pizza and shoot the breeze, but we do talk about the work a
little, and I just… I started to notice… and I don’t even know what I’m
talking about, but it seems like… patterns.
Information is circulating somehow, little items showing up in weird
places, echoes and variations on things that shouldn’t be where they are…
it seem wrong somehow. Does
that make sense?”
“I’m
not sure. I never did the big
business thing.”
“Don’t
think business, think real work, instinct.
Like before you enter a crook’s hideout, if it feels wrong, you
want to work out why before you step through the door and trip something.”
“Can
you give me an example?” Dick asked.
“You
know we had a Scarecrow episode a couple weeks back, right?
Three CEOs were struck with fear toxin.
They cancelled their appointments for a day or two and then, having paid off
Crane for an antidote, they all went back to business as usual.
As far as the Scarecrow end of it goes, it looked like straight
extortion: hit the rich man and make him pay up to get his life back.
But totally independent of the Scarecrow angle, when these
guys went missing, their businesses each took a hit in the market: Chief
Executive disappeared, nobody knew what was up, investors don’t like
uncertainty, they sold off stock, prices dropped.
That wasn’t something the Scarecrow did, it was a natural domino
effect. When the CEOs showed up for
work next day, their stock came back to where it was before.
With me so far?”
Dick
nodded.
“Ok,”
Tim went on “Now here’s the thing: some of the guys my friends have been
working for, they made money on those stock drops. They ‘sold short,’
that’s when you basically borrow shares you don’t own and sell them at
today’s prices. You have to buy
tomorrow to repay whoever you borrowed from.
If the price goes up between today and tomorrow, you lose out.
You might have to buy at $27 an item you sold for $22.
But if the price goes down, you make out.”
“You
buy back at $22 an item you sold for $27,” Dick said, showing he understood.
“Right.
And in this case, it’s almost like they knew in advance these guys
would go missing and their stock would fall.”
“That’s
insider trading, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,
to say the least. It’s insider
trading if you use publicly traded stock to profit from private information not
available to the full market. But Dick, we’re not talking about the
settlement of some lawsuit or somebody getting a government contract as the
private information.
We’re talking about advance knowledge of Scarecrow targets. And
the really creepy thing is that these guys went short when the target was Harold
Morton of the Morton Trust and when it was Charles Fitzwallace at Fitzwallace Tech, but NOT when it was Bruce Wayne
and Wayne Enterprises.”
Dick
shook his head, not quite following. “Look
Tim, I’m a cop and I’m not quite keeping up with the high finance end of
this, but it sounds like you’re saying somebody got wind of what the Scarecrow
was up to and SOLD information that these first two CEOs would be temporarily
incapacitated, and that somehow that person also knew in advance that the
Scarecrow would fail against Bruce?”
“That’s
exactly what I’m saying, Bro.”
“Bats
mustn’t get the girl.” Joker told the hyenas.
The hyenas drooled.
“Nonono,” Joker went on, “We’ll have to fix this somehow.
Get Selina to go back to Brucie. What are friends for if not to
smooth over these little squabbles such as sometimes occur between—HAR-LEY!
These mongrel mutts are getting hyena spit on my desk!
I can’t THINK this way. HAR-LEEY!—Oh
damn, left her at Arkham.
Bother.”
Joker
kicked the nearest hyena and tried to regain his train of thought.
It was so DIFFICULT to try and plan without the dumb blonde interrupting
all the time, asking stupid questions.
“Where
was I? Right. Get Catty to think Bruce Wayne is Batman.
Heh, what an idea. Now what are Batman’s distinguishing
characteristics? Dour, sour, party
poop. That isn’t something that
can be taught, though. What else?
No fashion sense! Get word
to Brucie to dress like an undertaker? No. HAR-LEEEY!
What is Batman’s single most distinctive characteristic?
What’s his big claim to fame?”
Joker
smacked his forehead and did a doubletake at the hyena.
“Why
of course, it’s me! Batman is MY
arch-enemy! Perfecto
HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAaaaaaaa—But how to
use that to show Catty he’s Bruce Wayne?”
He
looked at the hyena he hadn’t kicked, who continued to drool.
“What’re
you looking at?” he asked the animal. “Never
seen a genius clown with bleached skin and green hair befor-HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
Yes,
of course! It was Batman
that was responsible for his falling into that vat of chemicals that transformed
him into the Joker, soooooooOOOO if
he were to blame Brucie for turning his hair green and his pallor
white, then Bingo! Bruce Wayne is Batman! All he had to do was lure
Bruce Wayne into a deathtrap at the Ace chemical plant where
it all started.
HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAaaaaaaa—wait. No.
Again No.
If he dropped Brucie into a deathtrap, then Brucie would be DEAD and that would hardly improve his chances of
getting Catty back.
“HAR-LEY!!!!
HARLEY!” Damnit, he
just couldn’t think with all this peace and quiet and no dumb airhead
interruptions. He had to get her
back.
Three
hours later, Joker and Harley Quinn were at a McDonalds by the Hacienda North,
cuffs stained with blood and special sauce.
“You
see, Harl,” Joker explained, putting his feet up on the twitching body of the
night clerk, “it’s not like the dear boy really is Batman, so if we don’t
want him to wind up dead, we’ll have to stage some sort of rescue.”
Harley
held a Chicken McNugget up to her eye like a monocle, but made no contribution
to the conversation.
“A
last minute rescue from some unlikely source,” Joker continued.
“I know! What about the Hairdo? What
does he call himself, Head Deejay, Rabid Ghoul?”
“Ra’s
al Ghul,” Harley said, dipping her McNugget in Diet Pepsi.
“That’s
it. He thinks he’s Batsy’s greatest foe, after all (the nerve). Now, if he were to ever
seriously threaten Batman, I would have to step in, killing Batman clearly being
my prerogative as Batman’s Big Baddy, right? So
if the presumptuous hairdo wants to think he’s the big bad in Batdom, then he
would have to come through and make this rescue of poor Brucie.”
“I’m
confused,” Harley wailed. But
Joker ignored her.
“Daddy
has a plan,” he announced, “deathtrap for Brucie at the Ace Chemical Plant and have
Rabid Ra’s set up to rescue him.”
“But
Puddin, how will this convince Catty that Bruce Wayne is Batman?”
“WERE
YOU NOT LISTENING?!” Joker roared, smashing a plastic tray over her head.
“BATMAN is to blame for my distinctive pallor.
My avenging myself by offing Brucie at the Ace Plant in the very vat
where Bats made me go kerplop-gurgle-gurgle means Brucie is Batman!”
If her
head wasn’t throbbing from being walloped with a plastic tray, Harley would
have known better than to point out that she wasn’t listening because she
wasn’t there when he explained it the first time.
As it was, the throbbing in her head was soon forgotten due to a harder
tray-thwap on her bottom.
If
Ra’s al Ghul had a sense of humor, he would have laughed.
If he had an iota of empathy for his fellow beings, he might have felt pity.
As it was, as there was no advantage in either laughing at the Joker or pitying
him, the Demon’s Head was merely surprised. Surprise was still quite an achievement; you had to give the insane clown credit
for that much. After a few
centuries, Ra’s thought himself jaded. He
believed he’d seen it all. That
this 21st Century psychotic could come up with something so
insanely twisted as to cause surprise was an achievement.
He
wanted … this pitiful non-entity of a chemically-mutated psychopath wanted
the great Ra’s al Ghul to dispatch a rescue party to Gotham City to save the
Detective—no to save Bruce Wayne—from a death trap in order to convince a
woman that Wayne was Batman? It was monstrous.
That this demented individual was allowed to live was a sad testament to
the failings of Western government, of the Detective’s methods, and of the need for
global order that DEMON rule would bring.
The
Joker was a sad, sad case indeed.
But the information he so artlessly dropped in the Demon’s lap might prove
useful. Information was the
currency of power. Money was
inconsequential, Americans never
understood that. These tiny men,
these so-called leaders of the corporate world, did not begin to
understand: It was all about power,
not money; it was not necessary to own if
one controlled those who did.
With
his new network brokering information in Gotham City, Ra’s was securing
control over anyone and anything with power.
Those he tipped on the stock fluctuations of Morton Trust and Fitzwallace
Tech paid well for the information, and they assumed that was his motive in selling
it. Money.
The fools. What need had Ra’s al Ghul of their meaningless totems of
wealth? The buyers of his
information were now indebted to him. They
had engaged in insider trading. He
knew. They were now in his power.
Their corporations and all they owned were his to control if and how he wished.
It was a start.
He had
been concentrating on corporations thus far, as the paltry information they
considered valuable was so easy to obtain. He
had not thought to traffic in information of a criminal nature, apart from that
one Scarecrow episode, and that was only because the targets were CEOs.
But
this information falling into his lap, without his lifting a finger…
He would be foolish indeed if he did not ponder the possibilities…
If the
potential buyer were anyone other than the Detective, he would proceed without
question: Look at this valuable
stream of information I can open up for you if only you serve me.
That approach would not, obviously, work with the Detective, not put in those terms. But
what if… what if the information came anonymously, from “a friend.” Perhaps another type of Oracle emerging, no hint of reciprocal favors owed,
not at this time… Ra’s al Ghul’s skin warmed and his breathing quickened
as he thought through the next logical step in the sequence:
If the “friend” later got into trouble, the heroes he helped would
rally to defend him. It could be
managed. The Detective’s own
circle could be controlled this way. He
would finally be able to call the Detective into his service whenever he wished!
“NalFoy!”
Ra’s called to his new lieutenant, “open a channel to Gotham City.
Tell Ulstarn to establish the new man, Nethal, in separate quarters at
once. He must not be seen to have
any connection to the Chinatown operations.
He will take orders from me and no other.
He will receive these orders directly from my lips.”
To be continued…
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