Batman returned early from
patrol. He’d gone out early, in case the scum were emboldened
by the media circus of Sue Dibny’s funeral.
They weren’t. Gotham
was Hell Month quiet. Most years, an
uneventful patrol in January left him irate and frustrated. Tonight, he welcomed it.
It meant he could return home sooner to check on Selina…
Except she wasn’t where
he’d left her working on the Justice League security system… He checked the
gymnasium (in case she got stiff sitting at the worktable and decided to take a
break)… He checked the chem lab (because she sometimes used the Bunsen burner
to make cocoa)… He checked the med facility (because it’s certainly
possible to get a headache working late into the night that way and she could
have gone looking for an aspirin)… He checked the costume vault and the
Batwing hanger, even though he couldn’t imagine any possible reason for her to
be there (because feline logic is an enigma)…
Then he punched the intercom.
“Alfred,” he barked, not
waiting for any acknowledgement, “Where the hell has Selina gone to? I left her
working on the—”
..::Good evening, Master
Bruce,::.. a sleepy but smooth voice cut in calmly, ..::Do you require
assistance?::..
“I’d hardly have buzzed
you if I didn’t, Alfred,” was the curt but typical-for-Hell-Month reply.
..::Very good, sir, I
shall be down presently. ::..
“NO—Alfred, damnit,”
Bruce muttered, equally frustrated by the miscommunication and by his momentary
loss of control. “I don’t need
medical attention, I just want to know where Selina is. She’s not in the
cave.”
There was a pause.
..::At this time of night,
sir, surely bed would be the most likely—::..
“I left her working on the
Justice League security system in the cave.”
There
was another pause.
..::I fear, sir, that I can
offer you no additional information. I
will certainly check your bedroom if you wish. ::..
Alfred being Alfred, there
was nothing about his words or tone to hint that he was himself already in bed,
had been asleep, and viewed this whole proposal as a massive inconvenience. But to Bruce, who knew Alfred so well, those final three
words “if you wish” spoke volumes.
“That’s alright,
Alfred,” Bruce said mildly, “I’m going up myself.
I’m… sorry to have disturbed you, old friend.”
..::Not at all, Master
Bruce. Good night, sir. ::..
Guilt, one of several
emotions that came so readily to Bruce in January, spiked.
He removed the cowl and pinched the skin between his eyes.
With all Alfred did for him, day after day, year after year—weathering more Hell Months than any of them—you’d think he could be a
little more considerate. Those
thoughts of his own selfishness and ingratitude followed him as he changed
clothes and walked through the manor.
The clothes he wore that day as Bruce Wayne were gone, spirited away to
be laundered, the silk kimono left in their place.
Tonight, the kimono didn’t remind him of Selina, though it had been her
gift. Tonight, Bruce thought only of
how he wore it up to bed each night, and the next evening it would be back in
its place in the costume vault, waiting for him.
Alfred did so much for him, and what did he ever get in return…
The guilt washed away and
anger spiked anew when Bruce reached the bedroom.
Selina was asleep, Whiskers and Nutmeg curled at her back—taking up
more than a little (or at least a little) of his space on the bed.
“Out, both of you. Furballs,
out,” he growled softly, swatting at the space he wished to occupy.
Selina, recognizing his
voice, murmured something completely unintelligible that, to Bruce’s ears,
sounded like “Jackass.” He
removed the kimono, crawled into the bed, and stared at her for several minutes.
“Kitten,” he said
finally, giving her hip a less-than-gentle nudge.
There was another quiet
mumble that didn’t sound at all like “Jackass,” no matter how much
Bruce’s irritation tried to hear it that way.
“Kitten,” he repeated,
reiterating the nudge as well.
Nothing.
“Selina.”
Nudge. Nothing.
“Not this time, Catwoman,
put it back,” he growled in Batman’s deepest gravel.
Selina inhaled slowly and
rolled over to face him.
“Hey sexy, you’re home
early,” she purred sleepily.
Bruce rolled his eyes to the
heavens that had blessed and cursed the world with cats.
“Why aren’t you in the
cave?” he asked flatly.
Selina’s brow furrowed as
if she knew she wasn’t quite awake, but it still seemed (in her admittedly
wonky state) that his question made no sense.
“Same reason you’re
not,” she hazarded with the endearing air of a confused cat, “cause it’s
something-o’clock in the morning and the pillows are all up here.”
Then she ran her fingers
through her hair, rolled over mumbling something like “Night, Knight,” and
then said no more.
Bruce brooded for an hour
before falling asleep himself.
Hugo Strange looked out his
window for the 9th (or maybe it was the 10th) time since
returning from the Iceberg Lounge. Then
he went back to his desk and resumed sorting all his clippings.
There was no mention of
Batman or Bat-anything in the Times, Gazette, Daily Mail, or Post coverage of
Sue Dibny’s funeral, so he set all those articles aside in the
“Miscellaneous” stack…
He checked the window one
more time. There was no sign
of the sleek, black car he thought he’d glimpsed on his way home from the
‘Berg.
He returned to his stack of
papers—the clipping from the Post was sliding off, so he rummaged in the
bottom of the pile for a slim book to use as a paperweight.
“How to be a Superhero” by Doctor Metropolis, the cover
read… Hugo laid it on the top to keep the lighter articles in place, now at
least it was good for something.
He had found the paperback in the coffee shop at Barnes and Noble and
picked it up by mistake, thinking it would treat its weighty subject with the
seriousness it deserved.
He checked the window again. And there it was! The
black car—long, sleek, quiet—he could see now that it was a limousine.
Another limo, of course, pulling up at that new Japanese place across the
street.
Just his luck, a hot new
restaurant opening across from him right in the middle of Hell Month.
Nothing but long black cars dropping off and picking up at all hours of
the night. He was going to have to
move if this kept up.
In the morning, Bruce awoke
in an empty bed.
Well, at least she was up
early. Now at last he would get some answers… Then he heard the music—Vivaldi, the Four Seasons—coming from her suite.
She was exercising?
Bruce stormed across the
hall, fitfully tying the belt of his bathrobe into a knot as he entered
Selina’s suite.
“What do you think you’re
doing,” he growled in the same tones he once would have accosted her at a
crimescene.
She finished executing a
long, slow twist, evidently meant to stretch the muscles in her back one at a
time. Then she inhaled deliberately and breathed out her next words
before starting another purposeful, twisting stretch.
“Morning, Handsome.”
“I said what do you
think you’re doing up here?” Bruce repeated, still very much in
Batman-challenging-the-criminal mode—a tone Selina didn’t notice or else
chose to ignore. “You’re supposed to be working on the Justice League’s
security system for the Dibny case,” he pronounced, although it wasn’t
supposed to be necessary to tell the criminal what they were doing wrong.
“Yep, going pretty well,”
she breathed when the twist completed itself.
“I thought you understood
this was important,” Bruce growled quietly.
Selina stopped mid-bend and
gave him a look.
“Ex-cuse me? Are you not
getting enough fiber or something? What
makes you think—”
“You’re supposed
to be working on the security system.”
“I AM working on the
security system.”
“You’re not in the
cave.”
There was a pause, and
then…
“I salute you, World’s
Greatest Detective.”
“Impossible—the system
is set up in the cave,” Bruce insisted.
“Yeah,” Selina said
slowly, “I took it apart last night. Bruce,
did you think I would be in the cave the entire time I’m working on this?”
He said nothing, and Selina
realized that was exactly what he’d thought—and she didn’t like the
implication… She took a deep breath.
The breath might have looked like just another yoga-inhale to the casual
observer, but Bruce recognized it from a thousand rooftops and vaults.
It said “Oh good god, now what perfectly simple thing do I have to stop
and explain to the hero-addled intellect?”
“Okay,” she said
carefully, “Let me explain. Beating a system like this isn’t trial and error
or I’d likely wind up squashed flat on the cave floor by 10 G’s of Thanagarian
gravity. A job like this is thinking more than anything else,
once I know how the bugger works. That’s
where we are now: I’m thinking. I
do it in the shower, and while I’m doing my nails, and while I’m working
out, and on the roof of Cartier’s.”
“You’re NOT going
to go out prowling!” Bruce cut in angrily.
Selina’s eyes narrowed.
“That’s what this is
really about, isn’t it. The
cage! You thought I’d be in the
cave. You concocted this thing with the security to keep me in the
cave?!?”
“No,” Bruce lied—then
thought the better of it. “Not
completely. I do need to find out how that system was defeated.”
He swallowed hard before admitting the rest.
“And I would also feel better if you were safe in the cave for
the duration.”
“You controlling sonofa—”
Selina muttered darkly to herself before exploding, “Bruce, for pity sake, I
thought we settled this a long time ago. I
will NOT bring Shimbala down from the Catitat to be my 900-pound bodyguard, I
will not stay in the Batcave 24/7 like one of your goddamn trophies, and I will
not—”
“Not all the time, Selina,
just—for now—when I’m not at home, I’d prefer it if—”
“If I was tucked away under
lock and key like something that belongs to you.”
“If I could know
that you’re safe,” he pronounced with a quiet intensity.
Selina sighed.
“Bruce.
I love you, and I’m sorry that every January you relive that alley, and
I’m sorry that Sue Dibny is dead. But
I will not step into a cage. I will
not compromise who and what I am to make you or anybody else more
comfortable.”
“Why not?” Bruce said
wearily. “What would it hurt? For
me, Selina, couldn’t you compromise it just a little?”
“Would you?” she shot
back. “If I didn’t want you
going after Joker next time, and I said ‘Please for me.’”
“That’s different.
Joker is a killer.”
He said no more because he
saw Selina had mouthed his exact words along with him.
Then she added at a normal volume:
“It’s only different if
you want it to be, Bruce. You have
your priorities and I have mine.”
“Yours are wrong.”
“Pulling out the greatest
hits now, are we? Has it actually
escaped your attention that that little ditty has never once worked?”
Bruce grunted, turned, and
left.
“And neither has that
one,” Selina muttered to her exercise mat.
Titans, Titans of the
Nightwing era, Outsiders, Catwoman… Ra’s al Ghul… Huntress… For the life
of him, Hugo could not understand how his files had come to be so disorganized.
Perhaps it was Batman’s doing?
Could Batman have recognized the threat presented by Hugo’s special
understanding? Might he have
located Hugo’s new hideout, caused that new restaurant to open as a diversion,
and snuck in amidst the parade of long, sleek black cars? Why it made sense!
If Batman had infiltrated Hugo’s lair and messed up his clippings, that
meant he was getting close. Finally,
at last, Hugo Strange was getting close.
The clone theory, that must
be it. The Batman clone was the key to it all!
“An Identity Element is
something that acts on a set of numbers but leaves them unchanged…”
This was Tim, reading out
loud from a math textbook.
“Like for addition, a
+ 0 is still a…”
Studying for the SATs, or so
he claimed.
“Multiplication, it’d be
1: a x 1 is a…”
And if you believe that,
I’ll tell you another one.
“It’s also called a
unity.”
“Timothy,” I said
sharply, “How is it that you can maintain a secret identity when you’re such
a rotten liar?”
He looked all innocent and
pointed to his textbook.
“No, really, that’s what
an identity element is. Acts on
something without changing its essence and—”
“Not that,” I cut him off
with a hiss. “You’re not over
here studying for the SATs, Tim. You’re cat-sitting.”
“Selina, honest,” he
burbled miserably.
“And the nominees for worst
Hell Month performance by a crimefighter in a supporting role,” I pronounced. “Tim, I know he sent you over here to keep an eye on me.
I know he wants me to stay in the cave whenever he’s not at home, and
since he can’t have that he’s sent you in to either a) keep me from going out,
b) play bodyguard even though you’re 750 pounds shy of his first choice, or c—”
“It’s not any of those,
Selina, it’s… dumb, maybe, but…
yeah, Bruce did say how he’d feel better
if you weren’t alone in the house.”
“Alone?
What’s Alfred now, a shadow?”
“C’mon, you know what I
mean,” Tim sighed, “one of us, somebody a little more
battle-ready.”
“Tim, don’t make me punch
you flat on your ass just to prove a point here.”
“Selina, please, that’s
what he wants, it’s not why I went along with it.”
I could have kicked myself as
the reason Tim went along jumped out at me right before he said it out loud.
“I’m kinda here for Steph,”
he said simply—and I could have
sunk through the floor without any help from the 10Gs of Thanagarian gravity.
“Y’know, Bruce was—both of you, really—were so good to me when it
all happened and—”
“It’s okay, Tim.”
“And I was such a—”
“It’s okay.
Tim, really, stop. I suck at
this stuff more than you will ever know.
Let’s just drop it and go down to the cave for a bit, you and me
together, and I’ll show you how to outsmart a Martian heat trigger.
You might need it for the SATs.”
I’d said it mostly because
we were on a runaway train speeding towards a Lifetime Movie Channel hugfest. But the way it turned out, spending the afternoon talking
through the details of the Justice League security system, was extremely helpful.
There had been something bothering me about it since Bruce first brought
me in on this. Even as I was
reading the specs and taking the thing apart, even as I was trying to ferret out
some way to beat it, something nagged and I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Now, suddenly, the solution twinkled before me.
“Tim, it’s been real,”
I blurted, waving him towards the costume vault. “Now go bother other
criminals. Kitty is busy.”
“It’s January, Selina,
there are no other criminals.”
“SATs then,” I reminded
him, “Analogies, very important.”
Yes, I wanted to be rid of
him at that point. It’s always
like this: once I have a theory about the flaw in a system, I can’t wait to
test it. Usually I have to wait until dark. Right now, I only had to shoo away one pesky crimefighter who
wasn’t going to get his verbals up to Hudson U’s standard with construction
like:
“Selina, um,”
“Analogies, Tim, go and
study. Crimefighter is to pest as Batarang is to…?”
“Why me?”
“ERRKH! Wrong. State
college for you, young man.”
“You’re down here,
good,” a new voice, the deep graveling voice of the Hell Month control freak,
cut in before Tim could reply.
“Look who’s home,” I
noted. “Yes, Bruce, you’ve got your way for now. I am a
cave bunny. But only because I’m
onto something with this security system, so shove off and give me room to—”
“Selina, Tim,” he began—and my stomach lurched. I knew
suddenly that I’d misread him. It
wasn’t the usual Hell Month do-it-my-way voice at all.
“It’s happened again,”
Bruce was saying. “Jean Loring
was attacked in her home. Hanged.”
“Oh god.”
I thought the words
“Oh god” but I hadn’t said them out loud, and yet I heard them in
my ears, “Oh god.” Eventually, about six interminable seconds later, I
realized it had been Tim who spoke, and I felt stupid.
“No, she’s alive,”
Bruce went on, answering a question I hadn’t heard in my fog, “Atom got to
her just in time. They were
talking, Ray and Jean, they were talking on the phone at the moment she was
attacked.”
Another wife—technically
an ex-wife in this case, but there aren’t that many heroes whose identities
are known, so I guessed our serial killer would take what they could get—another wife, another loved one, attacked…
Bruce paused in his story,
turned to me and added, “Ray can travel across phonelines when he goes
molecular,” and then he turned back to Tim and said, “He was able to shred
the rope, cut her down before…”
“I see,” Tim murmured.
Two words and it was like the
life had been sucked out him. Atom
had saved his ex. He
had these superpowers. He “went
molecular” and rode a phoneline, and the woman he loved was still alive.
But Stephanie was dead.
My heart went out to the kid
so much it hurt. I knew I
should have allowed that Lifetime hugfest earlier, but that ship had sailed…
I wanted to do something, though. I
had one other idea, one that might be more productive.
“Tim,” I asked casually,
“This may sound odd, but would you go upstairs and ask Alfred to make me some
tea?”
I saw Bruce’s eyes flicker
to the intercom like he was telegraphing a batarang throw, and I shot back my
best rooftop “try it and taste whip” glare.
Tim said “sure” and left;
Bruce looked at me.
“You could have buzzed
Alfred,” he noted, with yet more disapproving battitude.
“Of course I could’ve,”
I said simply. “I wanted to talk
to you alone. I have a
proposition.”
He looked like he was bracing
himself for Joker to toss a SmileX grenade in his face.
“I’ll stay in the
cave,” I offered, “until you solve this case or the end of the month,
whichever comes first. In return, I want you to toss this solo-patrol thing you’ve
been doing and patrol with Tim instead.”
He started to object, which I
expected, and I ran right over him before he could cut me off.
“I know. NOBODY but NOBODY
tells BATMAN what to do, ever, on a Bat-related issue, any Bat-related issue,
especially one as sacred as Hell Month Patrol, genuflect when you say that,
Lady. But Bruce, he needs this.
Christ, even you need this. You’ve
both got… issues that this whole Dibny-Loring thing is making so much
worse. Bruce, please, I’m begging
you. Put the Psychobat in a drawer
this year and be Tim’s partner for a while.”
He stared at me as if,
instead of tossing that SmileX grenade, Joker had walked right up to him and
pinned a VOTE LUTHOR: 4 MORE YEARS
button on his cape—he was just as revolted, but it wasn’t the assault he
was expecting.
“Okay,” I said when it
became obvious the deathglare was the only answer I was going to get, “If you
won’t do it out of compassion or common sense, there is this: You want me in
the cave for the duration, and this is a way to get it.
This is my price.”
Another deathglare and more
silence, but then, without a word, he stuck his hand out.
We shook on it, and, a few
minutes later, Alfred brought me tea.
Hugo Strange dismissed the
idea of subjecting Batman to low levels of radiation to isolate areas of genetic
degradation to identify the clone. Irradiating
Batman at this juncture would tip his hand too soon. His personal history with
Batman had shown that it was best to have more information before attempting a
direct confrontation. But he could attempt a few tests if he could get a small
sample of “Batman’s” DNA. He immediately began scrambling through his
old notes… he knew there had to be something here that would allow him to get
close enough to get a sample without being detected…
A half hour after he brought
Selina’s tea to the Batcave, Alfred returned to collect her empty cup.
He found the episode vaguely disquieting, although he couldn’t say why.
Selina had never asked for anything to be brought to her in the cave
before, perhaps that was it? Or
perhaps it was a subconscious echo: he had brought Selina to the kitchen and
made her tea the day the terrible news came about Miss Stephanie.
He had promised her that tea would hold comforting associations for her—and now that the wives and loved ones of heroes were being murdered, she
asked for tea. Perhaps… Perhaps
and perhaps. Whatever it was that
unnerved him, Alfred would set it aside and offer whatever assistance he could.
Several hours later, he
returned to the cave with another steaming cup of tea.
This time it was for Master Bruce, back early again from patrol to work
on the Dibny and Loring cases. Alfred
noted that he still wore his full costume—even the mask, which was somewhat
unusual for late night work in the cave, but not unprecedented in Hell Month.
Unlike Miss Selina, Batman
did not look up from his work or acknowledge Alfred’s arrival in any way, so
Alfred coughed softly before relaying his message from Mr. Kent:
“He said they were turning
their attention to members of the Suicide Squad.”
“It’s not the Squad,
Alfred,” Batman answered. “The
squad doesn’t benefit, there’s no gain.”
“Indeed, sir,” Alfred
agreed readily. “Cui Bono,
then?”
Batman froze, his gloved hand
poised over a collection of mugshots. He
turned away from the photos of criminals and analyzed instead the face of a
friend. Alfred had said it in Latin
“Cui Bono” just as Bruce himself thought the words in English “Who
benefits?”
“It’s the first rule of
solving a crime,” Bruce recited, removing the cowl and then the gloves before
he sipped the tea. “If you want
to know who did it, you need to find out who benefits.”
“Indeed, sir,” Alfred
said, remembering the same conversation, so many years before, when Bruce was
perhaps twelve years old, enthusing over his first book on criminology.
“Asking ‘From whom is it good,’ a question first posed by a Roman
magistrate in the earliest days of the Republic, to determine who stood to gain
from a crime.”
Bruce set down his cup and
sighed.
“A Roman magistrate in the
earliest days of the Republic thought to ask Cui Bono.
But Superman and company are chasing around the Suicide Squad.
Some days, Alfred… we’re nowhere.”
Alfred said nothing.
Bruce said nothing. Then
there was a flutter of bats as Selina emerged from the med-facility.
She was wearing his kimono and holding a pillow under her arm.
“Good, you’re home,”
she observed dully. “I’m going
up to real bed then.” She
performed a strange little neck roll/shoulder shake that caused the whole top of
the kimono to jiggle. “Hurry up
and solve this thing, will ya, that cot sucks.”
Then she padded off to the
clock passage, leaving Alfred to look at Bruce and Bruce to look at Alfred.
“Very good, sir.
I shall leave you to your investigations,” Alfred pronounced at last.
Bruce grunted.
To be continued…
|