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New Database :: New
File :: Unindexed |
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Selina’s Decidedly
Off-Duty Definitely Not-a-log Chronicle |
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of Whatever She Damn
Pleases |
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MEOW |
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Love jewels. A diamond Napoleon gave to Josephine, a
necklace Lord Byron had made for Contessa Guiccioli or Horatio Nelson gave
Emma Hamilton. They’re not always spectacular gems in their own right.
Most are, especially if they’re given by a king, but some are smaller
stones, a little cloudy or not particularly well cut by modern standards.
But the story, the romance and the history behind them, to a certain kind of
collector those gems are priceless.
I always enjoyed snatching a love jewel. There’s the
bragging rights, naturally. Plus the challenge; famous jewels always have
the most creative security protecting them. And then there were the
collectors: those obsessed, competitive, relentless, and often quite
ruthless collectors—but such romantics, so passionate about their
obsessions. When they located a jewel, they wanted it so badly.
And
when the item in question was collecting dust in some corporate vault, only
seeing the light of day once in a decade when it was sent out to be cleaned,
it made for a very satisfying heist. Rob from the indifferent and give to
the romantic.
Well, sell to the romantic. I can’t say I did
it for love. Byron, Nelson, and Napoleon may have, but Kitty did it for
cash. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the collector’s
fascination. There is something very special about those pieces beyond
their obvious cost. Czar Alexander has some exquisite piece of Fabergé made
for his wife, the Czarina Maria Feodorovna, and a century later Stephen
Spielberg buys it for his wife because she’s playing a Russian
princess (descended from Alexander and Maria, as it happens). Edward VIII
has a pair of Cartier panthers made for the woman he gave up a kingdom to
marry, and a half-century later, an American crimefighter who bought them to
bait a cat burglar winds up sliding one across the dinner table, because
that cat burglar isn’t an adversary anymore. It’s not the jewels in and of
themselves, it’s not their intrinsic value or even their beauty. It’s what
they mean, what they represent: the grand gesture.
I fought crime for him. It’s not my kink, I didn’t
enjoy it much, and I wasn’t particularly good at it, but I did suit up in
the Batcave, checked the At-Large list before setting out, and went into the
city to stop baddies like me from doing what comes naturally. And I did
it—started doing it, at least—because he asked me. He wanted my help, he
wanted to include me in his world, and… and like an idiot, I just
FORGOT. I forgot the burning, soulful ache that started it all.
Crimefighting isn’t something Bruce does because he’s bored playing polo.
It’s who he is. No one will ever suffer what he suffered if he can prevent
it. How can you not love that? And he wants me to be a part of it. Bruce
wants me to share his mission with him, and I let Edward Richmond Nigma pull
my focus. For that alone, I should break him in two.
There was this one spectacular bracelet Edward VII gave
his last mistress, Alice Keppel. Hostesses of the period preferred
inviting Alice instead of the queen whenever the king came to dinner, since
she was the only one who could defuse the situation when he had one of his
explosive tempers.
His back is fine now. Has been for nearly
a week, and
he could have easily climbed the stairs and gone back to living in the
manor. But Batman wasn’t quite ready to resume patrol. He needed an extra
few days to “limber up” for the Batline, and it just seemed right to go on
living in the cave while he did it. So we spar a little in the gymnasium
and follow the sidekicks’ progress on the OraCom. There’s nothing to stop
me from going out myself, but… well, little gestures are worthwhile too.
He doesn’t want me catching up with Eddie until Batman is back on the job,
and it costs me nothing to go along with it. There were an awful lot of
nights when some little compromise that cost nothing would have made us both
a lot happier, so what the hell.
Bruce is obsessing on the fear toxin (speaking of men
with explosive tempers). It’s not that I’m overjoyed at that little detail,
but there’s another angle that bothers me a lot more. It’s that string of
Rogue hideouts that Eddie kicked off with, before the ATM clues: Mad
Hatter’s place, Ivy’s greenhouse, Two-Face’s last base at the Flick Theatre,
Scarecrow’s fife at Hudson U. That’s what Bruce sees anyway, a typical Cape
missing the point completely. He sees “Rogues.” But Eddie isn’t saying
“Rogues”; he doesn’t think of them as Rogues. He thinks of them as Jervis, Pammy, Harvey and Jonathan. What he’s saying is “Who’s next?”
Scratch that, if we’re going to do this, let’s put on
our straitjackets and do it in all its Arkhamesque lunacy. What he is
saying is “Riddle me thus, you faithless puss: Who is next? That’s why I’m
perplexed. Is there anyone you won’t turn on for him? Is there any friend
you won’t cut just to help the bat win?”
Okay, you know what, I’m not an Arkham case and I suck
at the rhyming shit. Point is, what Eddie is really saying is “Who’s next?” And because, despite all his charm, he’s a fucking nutjob, he can’t come
right out and say that. He has to dress it up in a string of fridge
magnet clues pointing to Rogue lairs. And then, apparently, he had to top
it off with a crimefighter trap sprung with fear toxin. Furious as I am, I
almost feel like… like… I don’t know. It’s almost touching. The grand
gesture.
I don’t expect Bruce to see it that way, of course. I
might not myself if I had actually snorted the stuff. We did talk about
it that night when he told me what Eddie had been up to, what I might have
seen. The greatest fear question, it’s a big one, and most of us night
people consider it from time to time. At least the sane ones do. It’s not
something you want to let take you by surprise, particularly not in front of
somebody who wants you dead. So if you’re smart, every now and then you put
on some Beethoven, pour a glass of wine, and do a little soul searching. I
hadn’t. And Bast knows, I should have. It’s been a good few years since my
last exposure. My life has changed completely since then, and it’s fair to
say the big fear has too. Considering the old fear involved exactly where
I’m living now, who I’m living with, and what compromises I’m
willing to make to keep it that way… yeah, the greatest fear has definitely
changed. I haven’t told him, of course, but he is the world’s greatest
detective, and he knows me pretty well. He must at least suspect
what that old fear toxin nightmare was. Anyway, we talked about it that
night: what the new triggered fear might have been and… and what the hell
Eddie could have expected to accomplish by it.
Ironically, what he did accomplish was ending my
fight with Bruce in the most amicable way possible and renewing my
subscription to Crimefighters’ Quarterly. When you find out your best
friend spent the last week conspiring to lead you around like a demented
puppy chasing a stick, only to introduce you to your greatest fear at the
end of it, I don’t care who you are, you need a hug! I needed a hug,
I said so, Psychobat handed off to Bruce and that was the end of the fight.
We should probably thank him. It would hurt a lot more
than the pummeling he’s going to get, but I would be the last to deny Bruce
the satisfaction of that pummel. He’s been inactive all these weeks, he’s
frustrated beyond belief, and the first Bat-beating is going to be epic.
It’s going to be savagery incarnate wearing a scalloped cape and a graphite
mask. And it is going to Hurt. Like. Hell. It’s downright patriotic of
Eddie to step up and volunteer for the job. Meow.
So my own satisfaction will have to wait a bit, but
until my moment comes, I’ll get to enjoy his and that should be quite the
spectacle. Again I say “Meow.”
We’ve already begun. Bruce and Selina returned from
St. Kitt’s the day before yesterday. Just in case anything went wrong with
my cover, we wanted to make sure it was only Catwoman who was exposed.
Nothing will go wrong, but if it does, then Selina Kyle is obviously up to
something, using her relationship with Bruce Wayne to gain access to Gotham
banks for some felonious reason. But if Selina isn’t supposed to be in
Gotham at all, if she’s supposedly traipsing around the Caribbean with Bruce
when she’s found to be posing as this Georgina Barnes, that would lead to
all sorts of questions about Bruce’s real whereabouts. So Monday we came
back, and Georgina reported for work at CashPulse, the first banking network on our list. The dear thing doesn’t dress very well: a fiercely
blue suit that contrasts just a little too jarringly with her fiercely red
hair, so that that’s all anybody sees. The brassy redhead in the blue suit
doesn’t have any facial features, a particular sort of voice or a certain
color eyes. It’s a perfect disguise really, giving them something
particular to notice instead of trying to be nondescript.
CashPulse was a bust, but it did give me a good
introduction to the system. Apparently that’s what Bruce had in mind. He
started me off at the company least likely to produce results, allowing me
to get acclimated in the financial world. Then yesterday, once I was
presumably “acclimated,” he started sending me to the most likely firms.
Today at BankLink International, I hit paydirt. Second try and we found
it. He’s that good, my Dark Knight. Is it any wonder we all love taking
him on?
Riddler gained nothing from the first ATM shuffle.
Batman searched every chain from every compromised account, and not one
penny ever found its way back to Eddie. It cost the banks time and money to
clean up the mess, but that money went into overtime and extra advertising
to polish up their reputations after the meltdown. So… Riddle me this,
riddle me that, how to make money while annoying a bat? If he didn’t turn a
profit that night, it must have been a demonstration. He’s proved he can
infiltrate the banking networks and shuffle the money around at will. If
they don’t want him to do it again, pay up!
That’s not the kind of threat the banks would take to
the cops, obviously—rather like diamond merchants relieved of a love jewel.
Diamonds are a very small world and million dollar deals are still made on a
handshake. Reputation is everything. So if you’re hit, you don’t let that
be known. Insurance premiums go up, and nobody needs that, but worse, your
reputation now has a big asterisk hanging over it. *Security isn’t what
it should be. *Vulnerable and careless. *Lacking in judgment or resources
to look after their own interests. *Putting their most valuable assets at
risk. No one needs that either, so they take the hit quietly and move
on. That’s what we count on, the cats and the collectors.
Although… You know, if it were me, I wouldn’t go to the
police either (obviously); police aren’t discreet. But if it were me, I
think I’d have to at least consider the possibility that a man in a mask
might be. I mean, Batman doesn’t have a face. He obvious
understands the concept of a secret worth keeping. But anyway, banking
networks, like diamond merchants, are not going to go running to the cops,
and either because they didn’t think to or because they didn’t know how,
they didn’t come running to Batman either. So we had to go to them. So,
this afternoon at 1 o’clock, right before slipping off to lunch, Georgina
Barnes messed up the really complicated logout routine on her new computer
at BankLink. She had to consult the index card everybody has to check 10
times their first day, and somehow, one oops following another, she wound up
triggering the backdoor that some low level WayneTech coder left in the
first generation software ten years ago—accidentally giving herself godlike
access to all accounts, emails, documents, and encryption logs.
And the most recent file sealed with the CEO’s
password? No riddle there. No crimefighter’s instincts required. A simple
cat burglar could have guessed: Eddie is asking for control of an account
with a $25 million stake, and $5 million to be added every month they wish
to continue without another cyberattack. It’s smart. He knows they’ll be
lulled into a false sense of security by that monthly payment. They’ll
think they have plenty of time to track him. But that money will be gone as
soon as he gets control of the account, and he’ll never return for
subsequent payments. Not a bad little scheme, really. The money moves
electronically, it’s not like saying ‘leave a paper bag under the bench by
the sailing pond in Robinson Park,’ so Eddie probably thinks he’s still
hidden. He doesn’t really understand what Bruce is capable of. For all his
posturing about Batman as the only brain fit to do battle with his own,
Eddie really has no idea.
He’s outmatched. That arrogant little touch using the WayneTech satellite, it gave us a traceback range. A 40-mile
traceback, but still, it was a start. The extortion email to BankLink was
sent by the same method, through a STAR Labs satellite this time. Traceback
#2 overlaps traceback #1 across an oval stretching from 71st
Street up to 96th. 25 city blocks may not sound like “Gotcha, Nigma,” not until you run it through a few directories and find…
Backgammon. A quaint little place in the basement of the Madison
Building on 78th, not the sort that even has a sign on the door.
An old world carpenter making inlaid chessboards and backgammon tables for
rock stars—if you believe their website. If you believe a place like that
HAS a website.
So there we are. It’s 24 hours before Batman goes back
into action. 0-minus-24 and we already know where Eddie is hiding. He’s
sitting there now, completely unaware he’s outmatched and outmaneuvered
without the Batmobile ever leaving the cave.
Bruce seems to have stopped typing over there.
Probably ready for bed. Big day tomorrow, after all. Batman’s backgammon
Oh shit.
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:: … … …
… … … … :: Duty Log: Batman :: … … …
For someone who is so adamantly “not a crimefighter,”
Selina has an amazing aptitude. Either that, or staggeringly unbelievable
luck. I certainly don’t recall any Robin achieving such results with such
apparent lack of effort.
The new log I created for her is divorced from the main
system and completely stripped of my personal settings and subroutines. As
such, it apparently reverted to the auto-completion defaults that were built
into the core software. I recall finding it annoying, having the system
trying to anticipate me, completing words after the first few letters based
on recent usage. I turned it off immediately. Selina evidently didn’t
think to, and as she began to type “Batman’s back in action” the system
tried to anticipate based on her previous paragraphs. From “back” it gave
her “backgammon.” Batman’s back to Backgammon. Batman’s
back? Game On.
We thought he wasn’t expecting us to find him. It
seems we were wrong.
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… … … … :: Selina’s Decidedly Off-Duty Definitely Not-a-log
Chronicle :: … … …
What a night.
Batman’s first night back in action. I thought he would want the cave to
himself getting ready. I knew we’d be working together in town, but I
figured suiting up again after all those weeks would be… well, a Psychobat
thing. Invocations of the sacred mission, genuflecting to the spirit of
justice, maybe a few passages read aloud from Crime and Punishment.
In general, an atmosphere that would not be enhanced by the presence of a
thief who could always make him forget which side of the utility belt held
the Batcuffs. So I said I’d go upstairs to change and meet him in town, but
he… he got this weird look in his eye and said “Don’t.”
Just that. “Don’t.” Second cousin to “No” under other
circumstances. One of those declarations you just don’t use with a cat. I
asked why (who wouldn’t), and he gave another really weird look and said
“Exactly.” (This is the man making snide comments about feline logic. Go
figure.)
Anyway, I stayed. The mood wasn’t any more somber or
portentous than any other night. No solemn vows or anything, just a
particularly nasty glare at the At-Large list. We suited up, he checked a
few things in the utility belt—looked like he wanted to check my whip, which
I am choosing to ignore—and then he got that look again. With the mask on,
I suddenly realized where I’d seen it before. Roof of the MoMA. None of
our encounters had been the same since Cat-Tales, but that night… that night
it was a new dynamic entirely. It was like he’d abandoned the gruff
Bat-manner too quickly. He was almost… conversational. Watching
them load the packed up masterpieces into trucks, he asked if I liked
Monet. And then after a few of the old sparks, that voice I’d never heard
before:
“This work… what I do… It’s my life. I
couldn’t—wouldn’t…”
It was the first time I’d ever heard that voice, maybe
the first time that part of him had ever spoken from inside the cowl. Would
certainly explain all the stops and starts. But that look in his eye,
that’s what I saw now.
“Want a lift? Or taking your own car?”
There was no searching for the words this time. Batman
is nothing if not direct. But the look was the same; everything changed
between us after that look. He was toying with an idea the same way I’d
look in Tiffany’s window deciding if I was going to let them keep a diamond
tiara or turn it into an extra leopard for the Catitat. That night, after
that look, he sent the note asking me to meet him at the opera house. What
the hell was he thinking about now?
“Technically, it’s the car you gave me,” I pointed out,
stalling for time. I gave the words the lightest, freest lilt I could
manage, even adding a little smirk at the end, but as usual he didn’t bite.
“Technically, it’s the car you gave me, too,” he
graveled.
(And hiss-growl-hiss-hiss-spit-growl, you just CANNOT
win a game of chess with that man!)
“You don’t think it’s a bad idea for Bruce Wayne’s
girlfriend to be riding around in the Batmobile?”
“Just for tonight,” he said.
I nodded. I’m still not completely sure what I agreed
to, but I nodded, and twelve minutes later, we were speeding across the 10th
Avenue Bridge and he grunted as we passed that billboard.
“Catworthy,” he spat. “Opals and tourmalines?
Catworthy? You never would have wasted your time on a place like that no
matter what their advertising agency dreamed up for a catch phrase. Not
when Cartier is only 4 blocks away, still using the same panther motif the
Duchess of Windsor made famous.”
I chuckled, which brought quite the death glower.
“A so-called friend should know that,” he hissed.
“Come on, you wouldn’t have wanted him sullying
Cartier, would you? I know I wouldn’t. Besides, I doubt Eddie could even
get in, and if he could, your counter operation would have been screwed
because Robin never would have made it inside.”
“He would do what was necessary.”
“Not in a hundred years would that boy make it to the
show floor to find whatever trap Eddie had laid for me. Cassie maybe…
if I coached her and we practiced for a few nights at the Olivieri
mansion.”
He grunted, and that was it for conversation until the
car turned onto 78th Street. I guess I was holding my breath or
something, because he told me to breathe. I did, and that was it for
conversation once again.
He stage managed it beautifully, the car slowing as it
approached the Madison Building, nearly coming to a stop right in front of
it, right across from the stairs leading down to Backgammon, and then…
Whoosh! Speeding away down the street with a roar of Bat-bravado.
Four blocks away and 20 stories up, Eddie was hunched
over his computer screen, watching the feed from his hidden camera, this
sour pout in his face that said “thwarted.” (An anagram for which happens to
be THWART ED. What it lacks in originality, it makes up in pertinence.)
What Eddie didn’t know, of course, was there was no one
in that car. We were both right outside the window, watching him watch the Batmobile pass on his decoy.
“It’s showtime,” I whispered.
But Batman just stood there.
“No. You go in. You need to talk it through.” Then he
massaged his knuckles slowly, the way a connoisseur swirls a fine cabernet
before tasting it, ending with an ominous “I’ll be here when you’re
finished.”
I couldn’t believe it. He’s been dying to get back
into action, and now he was postponing the confrontation? But it wasn’t the
time or place to question it, so I edged a few windows over, sliced up the
pitiful CPD gizmo Eddie had rigged up on the bedroom window, slid it open,
and went inside. I looked around for the Riddler equivalent of my Zen Cat.
There was a photograph of Doris in a silver frame. Just the right size and
certainly the right spirit, but it had a glass cover. That could get ugly.
Head wounds bleed a lot. The blood is very thin, slow to clot. So I poked
around some more. He had a Rubik’s cube calendar. It was a little small
and too angular. I didn’t want to feel like I was clonking him with a
rock. I wanted something flat, book sized, and personal… I found it
hanging over the bed. A framed fragment of a movie prop, a jigsaw puzzle
Susan Alexander is working on in Citizen Kane. Purrrrrrfect.
I took it off the wall, crept out to the main room, and
positioned myself without Eddie hearing a thing. One thing I’ve perfected
living with Bruce is coming up behind someone when they’re looking at a
computer screen without creating any telltale reflections. Also, being
silent on a stone cave floor is a lot more difficult than on Eddie’s
wall-to-wall carpet. Meow.
And THWACK!
I gave him a good solid smack across the back of his
head with his precious puzzle.
“OW!” was the predictable and predictably non-clever
response.
Which I enjoyed.
He tried to get up but I grabbed the back of his head
and pushed it into the desk a few times. Then he stopped trying to get up,
and I pulled up a chair and took a seat beside him.
“You are an addled nitwit, Edward Nigma, a fitting
anagram for which is addled nitwit. And you’re a shitty friend, an
anagram for which is shitty friend.”
“Look who’s talking, Traitor.”
“Oh give it up, Eddie. I have been spectacularly
patient with your marathon shitheadedness since this whole thing began,
because unlike the crimefighters you’re determined to paint me as, I
understand that when a cat brings you a disgusting not-entirely-dead
chipmunk, it’s because he thinks it’s a fine gift. He’s working with what
nature gave him: claws, teeth, and small furry animals that don’t have the
sense to stay out of his way.
“So I wasn’t pissed at the cat clue you sent to the
manor. I shrugged off the mind games at the MoMA, I didn’t hold a grudge
after Metropolis, and I certainly wasn’t going to go on a jihad because of
your Aries stunt at the diamond exchange. I know a dead chipmunk when I see
one. Don’t sit there calling me a traitor when you tried to
come at me with fear gas.”
“You work on his side of the street, you’ve got to
expect that, my weak lion.” Then he started counting off on his fingers,
“You’ve got to expect fear gas, hatting, SmileX, Ivy turning that Hell Month
fighting machine against you…”
“Eddie, you talk like I don’t get that anyway. Jervis
has hatted me. He’s hatted you, he hatted Jonathan, and then he had you
both attack me while he fear-gassed Harvey. We all got past it. If we held
onto those things forever, nobody would be speaking to anybody—which would
certainly limit the potential for future throwdowns, but it wouldn’t be any
fun. I mean really, it’s a big city out there and it sucks to be alone,
so…”
I shrugged. It’s the price you pay, being a
Rogue. He
knew that as well as I did.
“You can dress it up any way you want to, ‘Lina, you
still went white hat.”
“Yeah, I did. So what?”
“…”
“Paging Mr. Riddler, there’s an unanswered
question on the table. That’s is your thing, isn’t it? There
isn’t actually a
white hat/black hat divide for cats, but from your limited non-feline
perspective, that’s the only way you can see it. So I am conceding the
point. ‘Lina White Hat, A Tail When Hit, or whatever it was. So what?”
“…”
I hummed the Jeopardy theme to annoy him, and by a cute
coincidence, his screensaver kicked on and played the same music. He tried
so hard not to react, he was sucking in his cheeks and probably biting his
tongue trying to hold the pissed-off, dangerous Rogue mask. But that dinky
little tune kept playing and it all got the better of him. He lost the
battle and out came the snicker.
“You planned that,” he insisted.
I actually had no idea what his screensaver was, but
there was no point in going that far off topic. I just smiled like “the
ways of the cat are inscrutable.” Then I figured it was time to remind him
he was still a dot with one of those giant unanswered question marks looming
over his head.
“Riddle me this, Eddie,” I said softly. “If I have
‘gone white hat,’ so what?”
“So,” he said, lips pursed. “I don’t like it. I like
you, I do this, dot-dot-dot, more little chats like the one at
the Adamas Exchange!”
“Oh, with you there,” I nodded vigorously. “Liking the
crimefighter personally (which I’m not one, but again, we’re making
allowances for your limited non-cat intellect), liking the crimefighter
totally, totally sucks. Awkward, pissy, strained exchanges on
rooftops, angst-ridden aftermath, mess of a situation for everyone
involved. Been there, done that, it does suck. What’s your point?”
“…”
“Your point is that it’s not pleasant being caught
between a rock and hard place and you’d rather not do it?”
“… Kind of.”
“You know what else sucks? February. When those
slushy puddles of not quite melted snow are everywhere, but you’re not
wearing boots anymore, so you always wind up with that really cold wet ooze
getting into your shoe. And then you have to walk around all day with that
cold squishy feeling.”
“Um…”
“I hate that.”
“Yeah, so do I. Ah, ‘Lina, we seem to have wandered
off the subject a little…”
“Did we? I thought we were comparing notes about the
many and varied dead chipmunks that come with living in an imperfect world.
All those little annoyances that—”
“We were talking about you, that you would go so far
for that… that…”
“Batman.”
“YES, BATMAN! THANK YOU! That you would go so far for
that Bat-man that you not only stop stealing yourself, you come after the rest
of us.”
I smiled. I never went after Eddie, he
pulled on my tail. But I didn’t say that. Instead I just smiled,
which does tend to unnerve them, Rogue and crimefighter alike.
“What, what is it?” he said, looking around frantically
like he thought he was sitting on a bomb.
“I ever tell you about Colin Lerrick? Reclusive Brit,
chess grandmaster, buried himself in puzzles, IQ of 220. Been thinking
about him all week, I can’t imagine why,” I grinned.
“No, you have never told me about
‘I Click Loner,’” he
said acidly. “Pray continue with your transparent parable.”
“He’s not a fiction, Eddie. I did not make up a name
that had a nice snappy anagram for you. You can Google him if you don’t
believe me. I’ll wait.”
He did and confirmed that Colin Lerrick was real,
studied philosophy at Oxford, inherited a pharmaceutical company at age 23,
sold it for a hundred million pounds at 24, and retired from the world.
“If this rich guy likes puzzles so much, how come I’ve
never heard of him?”
“Because he doesn’t collect them, Eddie, he just likes
them. It’s not the kind of thing that goes in Who’s Who. He’d have no
interest in your Citizen Kane jigsaw, so he’d never bid on it.”
“So how did you find out?”
“Oh COME ON, Eddie! Live up to your name, figure it
out! It’s no fun if I tell you, is it?”
He made a face and sighed.
“Well obviously, since you were so stupidly unguarded
saying he doesn’t collect puzzles, that means he must collect
something else. Something Catwoman would be inclined to steal—back when she
had some scruples.”
“Only two insults, I think you’re coming around. And
of course you’re right. Lerrick collects love diamonds.”
“Love diamonds,” he said flatly.
“Right. A necklace Lord Byron had made for the
Contessa Teresa Guiccioli, for example. She was the last woman Byron loved,
his mistress when he was living in Ravenna, beginning work on Don Juan. It’s
a big gem, Eddie. On its own, it’d be worth a quarter of a million. But
you add in Byron, Teresa and Don Juan, the history and the romance… Lerrick
collects love diamonds. He’s obsessed with them, actually. All those
collectors are.
“Complete romantic under the eccentric hermit shell.
Had me deliver the stone to his estate, inside this
vault-cum-bunker-cum-private museum he has under his house. Showed me his
whole collection, jewels and paintings all connected to the great love
stories of history. Beautiful stuff of course, but it was the vault itself
that was the real treat.”
“Well of course,” Eddie said smugly. “If there’s one
thing a puzzling man knows, it’s how to devise a decent lock.”
“The walls were two feet thick,” I told him, leaning in
and speaking low, like it was something sexual. “Reinforced concrete,
sealed off with a tri-bi titanium door… Twin-bolt Swiss gear lock on a
prearranged time release, fingerprint recognition plus a 4-digit pin that
changes every 30 minutes—the sequence radioed out from the manufacturer in
Zürich…”
“O-o-oh, I like this guy,” Eddie shuddered.
“At least a code that’s radioed in can be intercepted,”
I pointed out. “Unlike the vocal signature for a voice recognition backup
linked to the main alarm. Could tell the difference between human vocal
chords and a recorded voice… I was giddy. Would have let him have the Byron
necklace for nothing if he’d let me have a go at its resting place in his
fortress. I almost proposed it, but he obviously thought it was his
collection that had brought such a flush to my cheeks, and I didn’t want to
take that away from him.”
“Aren’t you a sweetie. So you settled for cash.”
“The thing is, Eddie, Lerrick lives and breathes
puzzles as much as you do, but his passion is love jewels. Can you
guess why?”
“I have no idea.”
“Of course you do.”
He sighed.
“Edward?”
“Because love is irrational, ‘Lina. That is why it
fascinates him. It’s the puzzle that can’t be solved.”
There it was. He’d said it. Game. Set. Match.
“Puzzle that can’t be solved,” he repeated, his eyes
darting around the room.
“Nope,” I agreed. “Can’t be solved. Catlike, it
follows no rules but its own, and only it knows what they are. Also it can
change the rules any time it wants, in any way it wants, and there’s nothing
anyone can do about it.”
“The puzzle… that cannot… be solved,” he said again—and
I noticed now he didn’t seem to be breathing very well. “Love is a
puzzle… that can’t be solved.”
“Eddie, you’re not going to have a panic attack or
anything, are you?”
He lifted his finger like he was going to say something
VERY important, and then put it down.
Then the whole right hand swung around to his hip, like
he was ramping up to sing “I’m a little teapot” with the force of King Lear
raging into the storm. But when he did speak again, it was matter of factly:
“It’s a puzzle that can’t be solved,” he declared, his
left hand flitting up to complete the teapot effect.
“And since Bruce and I cannot be solved, you’re ready
to leave it alone?” I asked brightly.
His face fell, and then his head pulled back a little,
and he seemed to be staring at something invisible a short distance in front
of his face.
“I can see I have been looking at it the wrong way,” he
said finally—directing his statement to the invisible something, as near as
I can figure. Then he looked up at me.
“An addled nitwit?” he asked.
“And a shitty friend,” I answered.
“But still a friend?”
“If you want to be.”
“I assume he’s waiting out there to rip out my spleen.”
“At the very least.”
“Hmph.”
“I’m pretty sure you can live without one. Like the
appendix and tonsils.”
“You’ve made a list of organs he can rip out of
people without killing them!”
“Oh come on, Eddie, he’s Batman! I’m sure he knows
without anybody having to tell him.”
“Hmph.”
The silence continued for a moment. I figured somebody
had better break it before nosy outside the window noted the lack of
conversation and took it as a cue.
“I came in through the bedroom,” I mentioned casually.
“I see you still have Doris’s picture in there.”
“Well, I am an addled nitwit,” he said with a sad
resolve.
“Puzzle that can’t be solved, Eddie. Have you thought
to… maybe give her a call?”
“No, I don’t think that’s such a hot idea, ‘Lina.
Doris isn’t the type who would enjoy receiving a collect call from the
Arkham infirmary.”
“When you get out then.”
“And say what? Before I met you, I never went a day
without solving the Times crossword in less than 10 minutes, and now I
haven’t gone a day without solving the Times crossword and missing you?”
I shrugged.
“It’s not bad. As dead chipmunks go.”
“No,” he said with a sour face. “It’s not really on
point. Like those cat clues, they had nothing to do with banking. I
tried, ‘Lina, I wracked my brains trying to come up with some kind of
obscure banking trivia that tied in to paws or whiskers or even milk!”
“What about Bengal Central Bank, where you inserted the
virus.”
“You noticed that, eh?” he beamed.
“Of course. It was a very thoughtful touch.”
“Ah ‘Lina, it’s not the same. The clues should
have had something.”
“Maybe your heart wasn’t in it,” I suggested.
“Oh, my heart was in it. Just not my brain, I
guess. Oh well, I’ll do better next time.”
“Of course you will,” I smiled.
The moment felt good, natural, easy. Then his smile
faded.
“Time for me to take my medicine,” he said darkly.
“Yep,” I rose, planning to go back the way I came.
I’d gotten as far as the bedroom door when he called
out “‘Lina, before you go, uh…”
I turned back. He looked embarrassed. When he spoke,
I understood why:
“How’d you find me?”
Poor Eddie. He has this little quirk, leaving clues
unconsciously when he doesn’t mean to. We’ve talked about it. Every time
he thinks he has it beaten, his subconscious goes and leaves Batman an extra
hint or three. I started to tell him he’d done it again, but he refused to
believe it:
“Oh come on, no! It can’t be—NO! NO! NO! That hasn’t
happened for more than… six years! Six years, three months and eleven days,
I’m clean. No more Freudian clues, none. I’ve licked it, I tell you. I…”
I shook my head sadly. And his eyes darted around the
room again, trying to figure it out.
“What’d I do?” he asked finally.
“Vince Turner. Eddie, you rented this place under the
name Vince Turner.”
“So what?”
“Vin. Wine. Eddie, ‘vin’ is French for
‘wine.’”
“Wine turner,” he said dully.
“And the process of turning champagne bottles as they
ferment so the sediment collects in the neck is called…?”
“FUCK ME!”
“No, ‘riddling,’ but I take your poi—”
“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck-”
“O… kay,” I whispered, backing slowly towards my
window.
“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!”
I’m pretty sure he doesn’t carry on like that when
Batman answers the big riddle, so I figured I’d just go and let them
both do their thing.
“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fu-KRRHKK…” was
the last thing I heard before swinging away.
With the OraCom, I knew I’d be able to meet up with
Bruce by morning and get a ride home. I headed uptown to prowl, and then…
At last…
A worthless, overreaching amateur was trying to break
in at Cartier.
Meoooooooooooooooow.

© 2009
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Cat-Tales 58: Demon’s in the Details |
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