The first time I invited Hagen to the Cat Lair, I was
ready for trouble. I had armed myself with two atomizers, a water pistol
full of super conductive fluid, and a thorough reading of Batman’s threat
analysis and research logs on shapeshifters, subheading: Clayface. As time
went on, I got to know Matt and I relaxed a little. I never forgot he was a
shifter. That would be impossible when he’d decide to morph into a jungle
cat just to spice up my Queen of the Underworld appearances at Vault. But I
got to see the kind of man he was, and he just wasn’t a snarling,
foam-at-the-mouth Arkham case. So I let my guard down, as much as I do with
any rogue. I certainly didn’t answer the door packing a seltzer
siphon, so I had to improvise when he went for Eddie.
Champagne was premature, but we had opened a bottle of
pinot grigio. I sacrificed my glass and splashed it on Matt’s right hand.
It wasn’t any kind of deterrent if he’d really been intent on choking the
life out of Edward Nigma, but he wasn’t. Like I said, Matt isn’t a
snarling, homicidal headcase. He was just really pissed at the moment, and
I had to find out why—but first I had to break his focus. Throwing anything
wet on his clay accomplishes that. The hand around Eddie’s throat lost its
form and became a flat muddy streak against the side of his neck, down his
tie and the front of his shirt. It hung almost suspended for a second,
clinging to the fabric like a jumper who had second thoughts, and then it
all sort of glorped to the floor where a clay foot expanded to catch it.
Matt wasn’t looking at it or at Eddie, he was looking
at me, like I was the one who owed him an explanation.
“No punching, choking or clay-smothering my guests,” I
said, trying to avoid Bruce’s ‘My cave; my rules’ tone but probably
failing. Eddie was still hacking and gasping, but I knew there was a
question in all his inaudible sputters. A question I wanted answered too,
so I asked on his behalf: “Why?”
“That little weasel is leaving clues for
Batman,” he said.
I turned to Eddie, who despite not being a
shapeshifter, managed to look like a cartoon rabbit. That moment
they see a barrage of knives, arrows or missiles coming at them, and their
eyes bug out bigger than saucers.
“I did? But I didn’t,” he squeaked. “I wouldn’t. I
couldn’t. No Mr. Confabulate, No Fatal One Crumb, No Ambulance Fort, No
Cruel Foe—” His lips snapped shut as if he was hit by a wizard’s curse or
something. He sat down, back straight, hands on his knees, palms down and
looked straight ahead. He seemed like a robot who had been shut down by
remote control. “You talk,” he said finally, looking up at me.
I could see in his eyes he was scared. Not of Matt
either. He was scared of something else. Considering what Eddie knew, and
considering the way he believed in the curse, I was a little afraid myself
what he might babble if he freaked out like that again.
“Matt, why don’t you and I go into the kitchen and talk
in private. Eddie…” I pointed to the magazines on the coffee table. “Cat
Fancy, 17 things you never knew about Tabbys. Read.”
I took Matt into the kitchen and got his side of the
story. There wasn’t much to it. He’d spotted Batman near The Club Room the
night after he’d brought Eddie and I there for the first time. Went back
later and confirmed with the doorman that Batman was poking around right
after Eddie left with the Smeks. It was hardly a smoking gun.
“If Batman was there—” I started to say.
“He was,” Matt said firmly—sounding more than a little
like Bruce, actually. Stubborn.
“Fine, he was,” I conceded. “He’s Batman. He has a
thousand ways of finding things out. If he was there—”
“He was.”
“That doesn’t mean Eddie brought him with a clue.”
“Oh sure, it could be a coincidence. Right, Cat? Or
he could have followed you. Maybe he thinks Wayne is up to something
shady. He’s Gotham’s own Lex Luthor, right? So maybe Bats is keeping an
eye on the manor, saw you doing something suspicious and followed you to the Club
Room. Then he went back the next night when you weren’t there and
Nigma was. Makes perfect sense.”
“You know, sarcasm aside, it is possible,” I told him.
It was more possible than he knew, but without going into that nightmare
scenario, I saw no harm in admitting the literal truth. “If Batman is onto
us—and this is where you interrupt me and reiterate that he is—then it
really might be my fault and not Eddie’s. It’s also possible that Eddie
left a clue unconsciously. That’s happened before when there wasn’t
a curse hanging over him. And yes, it’s even possible that your theory is
right, his compulsion won out over common sense and he did it
deliberately. It’s all possible right now, Matt, but none of it is
certain, so next time, let’s find out before we go all Russell Crowe and the
paparazzi, kay?”
It’s not that he smiled, it’s that he turned into
Russell Crowe before he smiled. That’s how I knew I had him. I made a note
to myself to add a little addendum to Bruce’s threat diffusion matrix:
shapeshifters, subheading Clayface. There’s nothing like a little
charm, an appeal to reason, and comparing him to a film star.
I prowled. There was nothing more to do on the con
until morning, and I didn’t want to run into Bruce before the sting. So I
prowled. It was a rainy night. Not the best whip-swinging weather, so I
stayed in the neighborhood at first. There’s a poker game run by some
idiot Falcone cousin that I drop in on now and then to make mischief. It’s
a high stakes game but hardly catworthy. So I’ll clank around the fire
escape and fiddle with one of the windows until one of the neighbors hears
me and calls the cops. Settle on a nearby roof to watch the fun. There are
really few sights as rewarding as a dim-witted Falcone that thinks his game
is being raided…
Except tonight, there was no poker game. There was
just a trashy blonde I would have pegged for a working girl, except she
wasn’t giving anything but conversation in exchange for the bills the men
entering the apartment were paying her. I watched four transactions from my
perch before I got curious, tapped one of the guys leaving and reimbursed
his $20 for the info. Then I had to brave the rain and schlep out to the
Bronx to see it for myself. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could take
anybody’s word for, you had to see if for yourself. Having seen it, I
couldn’t wait to tell Eddie in the morning.
“Chess boxing?!” he squawked. “’Lina, it’s not nice to
tease a man in my condition.”
“Georgina,” I reminded him, pointing to my
obnoxiously red hair.
We were back in the financial district, not inside the
BankLink building this time but standing in front of it. The Smeks could
have returned to Dwight’s office, brought their checkbook and signed the
papers there, but rogue-like, they apparently wanted the home-field
advantage. Dwight and Eddie were to go to Marcus’s uptown office to
pick up the check and sign the papers. To make up for the
inconvenience, Marcus was sending a car, so Dwight and Eddie had to be in
front of BankLInk to be picked up from a plausible location.
I wouldn’t have been involved at all, except Eddie was
afraid to be alone with Matt. He figured he’d be safe once the chauffer
arrived, but waiting for the car, he wanted protection. So I became
Georgina Barnes one last time, rounding out her varied career in the
financial world with a stint as Dwight Evans’s secretary. Since
Mr. Evans
was late. I made small talk with the man he was meeting.
“’Gina, ‘Lina, whatever. I’ve got Retch Tigress Fur
hanging over me. The curse knows its days are numbered, it knows I’m almost
free. This is its last chance to get me, ‘Lina. Not a time for jokes.”
“Georgina,” I corrected him (again). “And I’m not
joking. Four minutes of chess, and then assuming there’s no checkmate, they
put on the gloves and box for three minutes. Assuming no knockout, they go
back to the chessboard.”
“Out of breath and bloodied, pawn to queen six?”
“You got it.”
“I have to do this. I have to make him do
this. ‘Lina—I mean, ‘Gina—you won’t tell him, will you?”
“That’s where your mind goes? Damnit, Eddie, I told
you because I thought you’d get a kick out of it. I didn’t think it was
going to become a… a theme thing.”
“Please, ‘Lina. You know how hard it’s been to find
decent themes for a crime spree since finding out abou-uh…” he gulped.
“Never mind.”
On the one hand, I was glad that, even behind
Georgina’s glasses, I could produce a death glare that could stop The
Riddler mid-sentence when he was heading full speed towards a question
mark. On the other, I couldn’t believe I had to. He was asking if I knew
how hard it was keeping the crime game going once Batman whips off the mask
and moves into your day life. I was ready to hiss when a taxi passed. It
hit a puddle and splashed Eddie, coating him from the knees down with a
muddy glop. I decided to postpone being mad at him for a few more hours.
If the curse was real, alienating me before the sting would be a good way to
screw him one last time—or to dismantle the con entirely, come to think of
it.
Dwight rounded the corner. He stopped at a newsstand
and bought a paper. A Wall Street Journal, of course. Matt and his props.
Then he stopped for a shoe shine. I thought it was cute, getting a peek
behind the curtain, seeing an actor get into character that way. Eddie
just grumbled.
Batman once observed that, if I was only in it for the
money, I would have been set after my first Monet. There’s a fun factor,
for one thing: satisfaction beyond the dollars and cents. Pouring Matt and
Eddie into the Smeks’ Town Car was not satisfying. And it occurred to me,
watching from the curb as the pair of them were driven off to the sting in
the mark’s own limousine, that since I was dressed as Georgina anyway, I
really didn’t have to miss out on the fun. They had a head start, but I
knew that Town Car would be crawling up Broadway in the very worst of Gotham
traffic snarls, while I could take side streets to the bridge and zip up the
expressway. I suppose, technically, Georgina shouldn’t have driven Selina
Kyle’s Lamborghini, but I had a scarf in the glove compartment that hid the
hair. Unlike Angelica, Georgina has some semblance of a figure, so at
worst, if anyone spotted me, it looked like Selina was having a bad hair
day.
I got uptown in plenty of time, parked, discarded the
scarf, and found the Smeks’ office in the Kensington Building. The other
tenants ran the gambit from theatrical agents to architects to a medical
supply firm to a dentist. I chose the latter to get past the front desk.
Nobody presses for details when you’re holding your jaw, wincing as you form
the words “eleven o’clock dental appointment.” As the elevator
approached the Smeks’ floor (DreamFixer Imports on 18), I figured I’d dig
into the alternative cons Matt had come up with to get an office space in
the financial district.
“Georgina Barnes, Customs and Excise,”
I rehearsed in my mind. “We’ve been unable to contact the signatory on the
last 1029-IDT Return to be submitted from this address. You may have
submitted an incorrect return, which might mean an additional amount to
pay…” This, Matt stressed, in a tone which assured them the ‘may’ and
‘might’ were a polite fiction mandated by my superiors. They most certainly
HAD submitted an incorrect return, and there most definitely WOULD be more
to pay, and ice queen that I was, the prospect pleased me immensely. I
would then ask for an office and access to their purchase invoices for the
last three months. When they started to object, I was to put on a high
school principal voice and say “Do you understand the nature of a spot
check?” while my partner (Matt, when we rehearsed it, although Eddie
gave the line better) would condescendingly whisper “The clue is in the
title.” Since I had no partner, I would skip that part and go straight
for the final threat: the issues I had could be cleared up in an hour or
so, but if I had to come back, it would be for a full audit.
I went over the lines twice in the
elevator, but when I reached the desk, I got no further than “Georgina
Barnes, Customs and” when the receptionist waved her hand at me in a languid
sweeping motion.
“Just go on back with the others,” she said. “End of
that hall, make a left, half way down. It’s the second glass wall on the
left side. They’re waiting in 2B.”
Matt Hagen had never played a “Signing of the
Trask/Metro Merger” scene, but he had bought a house. He therefore based
his performance on Stacy Richards, his Malibu realtor, if she was played by
Harrison Ford in Working Girl. “Sign here. Initial there… Now if
Mrs. Smek
will sign here as well. Initial there and there… Now if Mr. Nigma will
initial one more time here next to Mrs. Smek’s signature…”
Edward Nigma had never bought a house, but
he had an instinctive understanding of his part in the scene: a Rogue who
just wanted to get his hands on the money, trying to hide his impatience
with all the stupid paperwork.
“Remember, Wayne stock won’t plummet immediately,”
Marcus said to pass the time more than anything else. “There will likely be
a slight drop in all tech stocks when the news breaks. It’s important not
to react to that minor dip. The payday will be when the common denominator
is found.”
“Serves the trust fund right,” Paula said coolly. “WayneTech didn’t get half what they should have for all those products out
there using the process.”
“Those licenses don’t come cheap,” Marcus said, more
surprised than Eddie or Dwight by her comment.
“Mere money,” Paula sniffed. “Every electronics
manufacturer needing your patent to stay competitive, think of it.
Think of what Luthor would have done, leveraged it for real power—over
all of them—instead of settling for a fat ROI.”
“Last page,” Dwight Evans said brightly, the forced
cheer in his voice belying his eagerness to get the transaction over, get
out of the office, and get far, far away from Paula Smek: Luthor fan. “If
Mr. Smek will just initial here, here, here, here and here, and you both
sign down there, we’re all done.”
Finally it ended. Marcus wrote out the check, signed
it, slid it over to Paula, she signed it. Slid it back to Marcus, who tore
it out of the check book and held it out to Dwight—when suddenly the door
burst open. Four men in suits surrounded the desk, as the one behind
Marcus pulled him from his chair and intoned “Marcus Smek, you’re under
arrest for forty-eight counts of fraud, sixteen counts of grand larceny,
sixteen violations of the Internet Trade Act, thirty-four…” while the one
behind Paula recited the same, about four syllables out of sync.
In Eddie’s mind, the scene seemed to play in slow
motion as he leapt from his chair, lunging forward to grab the check from
Marcus’s fingers, his own voice distorted into a downshifted “Nooooo” as the
policeman swung Marcus’s arm behind him to apply the handcuffs. The check
fluttered to the desk, where a third agent picked it up.
“Here,” he said, handing it casually to Eddie. “It’s
no good. Their accounts were frozen at 9:01 this morning.”
Marisol didn’t know what to expect when she agreed to
this “chess boxing” in her basement, but she hoped it would bring in some
money. Mari & Diego’s had failed as a bar and Marisol’s Griddle was failing
as a restaurant. Diego was gone and money was money, even if the idea of
boxing made her sick. A little extra from Falcone for the use of the
hall and a little extra selling beer and sandwiches to the crowd—assuming
anybody would come to watch this crazy thing—it could make the difference
between keeping the doors open one more month or telling Victor and Bobbi
they better start looking for work.
She didn’t know what to expect from this chess boxing,
but if she had guessed, it wouldn’t have been Riddler, Clayface, and
Catwoman sitting in the back of the crowd, looking like their dog died and
periodically coming up to the bar for a beer. But there they sat: three of
the most dangerous villains in Gotham. She knew she should call the police,
but she really couldn’t. Not when a) she was letting Roman Falcone’s wise
guys hold boxing matches in her basement and b) the villains hadn’t done
anything more villainous than watch the fights and pay for their drinks.
“So there’s, what, five ways to win or lose?” Clayface
asked.
“Knockout, checkmate, judge’s decision,” Catwoman
counted off on her claws.
“Throwing in the towel,” Clayface added. “And…?”
“Taking too long to make a chess move,” Riddler
grinned.
They got up together and walked towards the stairs,
Marisol hurried ahead in order to beat them to the bar. She poured their
beers and then left them alone in the empty restaurant.
“It was a novel experience, that’s all I’m saying,”
Matt said philosophically. “I’ve never been in a room when the cops burst
in to arrest somebody that wasn’t me.”
“Technically they were Feds,” Selina noted. “GCPD was
there, but Special Agent Dietz won the coin toss, so the FBI got to make the
actual arrest. Gotham’s Finest get to fight it out with the IRS, Treasury
and the Securities Exchange Commission for whatever’s left.”
“And you were in the room with them?”
“Yep, it was a half-hour to remember.”
“Easy for you two to kick back and compare ‘novel
experiences’ from this fiasco,” Eddie grumbled. “I’m doomed to go through
life with the Grifter’s Curse emailing the answer to my riddles to the
entire J. Peterman mailing list.”
“Should we tell him?” Matt grinned.
“The atomic number of niobium. Who knows that?!” Eddie
wailed.
“I think we better,” she winked.
“Tell me what? Tell me what?”
Hagen reached into his clay and pulled out a fat manila
envelope.
“The Smeks did not invest in Nigma Solutions,” he
began.
“I know, because their assets were frozen.”
“No, Ed, before that. They never intended to; they
were playing you from the beginning. They went back to Vries and offered
him 10% more than whatever you were paying him. Then they went back to
Evans and told him to put only as much of their investment into your company
as you would need to execute the black box phase of the operation and ruin
Wayne. I was to put the rest into a new corporation: Smek Solutions. They
were planning to shut you out and make a killing on the new process
themselves.”
Eddie started to giggle, despite the blow to Rogue
pride that these low-rent Internet scammers thought they could cross the
Riddler that way and live to enjoy the result.
“They wanted to—” Another helpless giggle escaped him,
almost as if he’d been exposed to SmileX, and then he composed himself.
“They wanted to steal the patents for Dr. Vries revolutionary new
variant on the Wayne process to make copper based microchips? Oh
that’s too funny.” He broke off and cackled again, and this time Matt
joined in.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Selina said sweetly. “I’m sure
there’s somewhere in the world where electroplating pots and pans is
still considered cutting edge technology. Ra’s al Ghul’s base in Kyrgyzstan
maybe. They might have sold a few.”
Clayface morphed into a DEMON minion wearing a chef’s
hat. “Your majesty, I have the honor to present your morning egg, prepared
in a state of the art frying pan imported all the way from Gotham, city of
your great enemy, center of Western decadence. But these Smek people do
make some damn fine cookware.”
After another round of laughter, Eddie became serious.
“Well, technically I did con them, I guess. But I
didn’t make a dime from it, and don’t know if that would count lifting the
curse. Grifters do it for money, not to right a wrong. I bought
those nincompoops lunch! I’m technically out of pocket on the deal.”
The clay-minion morphed back into Dwight Evans, who
took the fat manila envelope from his breast pocket.
“Bribery is a cash business, Ed. Dr. Vries’s extra
10% was to come out of the investment check we never got to cash, but they
had to pay Evans to dummy up the papers, remember? $10,000.”
Eddie looked from the envelope to Matt and then to
Selina.
“That’s $3300 apiece, Eddie. Not a huge haul, but it
more than covers lunch and whatever you spent on the phone.” She smiled and
then added pointedly “With enough left over to get you started on a proper
lair in a respectable part of town.”
“What do you call a West Side walk-up with a river view
and a Bat-trap in the basement?”
“Sounds like he’s back,” Selina told Matt.
“Riddle me this! How do the Z pad your bill if you
actually request a vintage popcorn machine, Fender guitar, and
Venetian mask from the set of Eyes Wide Shut?”
“He’s back,” Matt said flatly. “What have we done?”
“Riddle me—HEY, why didn’t you guys tell me about the
payoff before now?”
Clayface morphed into an exaggerated Riddler
caricature, made an effeminate “ta-da” motion with his right hand and it
changed into a miniature Bat Signal. The signal then shot a fake
clay-shaft of light onto the wall, with the center image shaped like a
question mark instead of a bat.
“Riddle me too, for I will now answer my own question,”
he declared in a squeaky parody of Nigma’s own voice. “Why would my
partners think the compulsive nutjob who goes running to Batman dispensing
hints to everything we’re doing SHOULD NOT BE GIVEN ALL THE INFORMATION?!”
“ehrm-kuhm,” the real Eddie coughed.
“It really didn’t seem like a good idea to tell you,
Eddie. Not with the curse hanging over you.”
“Et tu, ‘Lina?”
“Atomic number of niobium?”
“Meh.”
Matt proposed a toast to the Bat-free conclusion of a
successful Rogue enterprise. Selina drank, although she wasn’t sure either
term applied. They’d come away with 2% of the score they set out for. None
of them cared about the actual money: Hagen bet his cut on the chess-boxer
in the red bandana, Selina left hers in Marisol’s tip jar, and Nigma’s only
concern was that he scored enough to redeem his mojo from the karmic pawn
shop. Still, 3k a piece wasn’t much for three of the biggest names in
Batman’s Rogues Gallery, and Selina knew it. She also knew a “Bat-free
conclusion” was very much in doubt.
She couldn’t confirm that until she rid herself of
extra Rogues, so she skipped the last bouts. She kissed Matt-Eddie on the
cheek and thanked him for his help, ran her fingers through Eddie-Eddie’s
hair and told him to call when he had himself a new lair. Then she left,
dropping the thick roll of bills in the tip jar on the bar as she passed.
She didn’t get far. Two blocks from Marisol’s, she
felt the tingle. Though the surrounding buildings were much shorter than
the mid-Gotham skyscrapers, she unholstered her whip and took to the
rooftops. She searched the horizon for signs of a cape but saw nothing.
She returned to street level, and a moment later, the Batmobile pulled in
front of the alley she was stepping out of.
“Get in” he graveled in that ominous “this isn’t a
request” tone that I used to find so infuriating. It still ruffles my fur
a little, but having heard it enough times from Bruce since we got together,
it gives me a little rush now hearing it from Batman.
“How was your day, dear?” I said, slipping into the
passenger seat.
“Wait,” he said. The door closed, and
I heard the click-click-hum of the internal scanner.
“You’re making sure I’m alone,” I said.
“Hold.”
I could barely stifle the chuckle. He’s so sexy
when he gets that way. Infuriating, but sexy. I ‘held’ (apart from a
naughty grin) for the final second of scanner-humming—after which, I knew it
was safe to talk, but I waited for the go-ahead.
“Grunt?” I prompted.
“You were with Hagen. I wanted to make sure
appropriate precautions were taken before you used the OraCom.”
“I never use the OraCom,” I pointed out.
“No, but tonight you have questions. You might have
called Barbara to learn my 10-20.”
“You’re such a liar,” I teased. “I ‘took precautions’
every night at Vault, as you well know. And Matt never once tried to
‘follow me home.’ So why don’t you just admit that you were lurking because
you wanted to talk to me too.”
No grunt—but the car sped up, which was as good as an
admission as far as I was concerned.
“Should I start?” I asked sweetly.
Again silence from the belfry, apart from a rather
angry acceleration as he turned onto the bridge.
“Honey, I’m afraid I caused a little dip in the NASDAQ
again,” I said like a 50s sitcom wife who’d dented the car. That brought a
liptwitch.
“Not this time,” he said—astonishingly, in Bruce’s
voice, which I don’t think I’ve ever heard while he’s driving the
Batmobile. “The Smeks did sell their Wayne holdings but there were
ample buyers, so there was no price fluctuation. Then they went on to short
sell an additional ten thousand shares, expecting to buy what they need for
pennies in a few weeks to cover the obligation. That produced a very minor
drop, 1/32 of a point, not enough to affect the composite indices, and it
corrected by the closing bell. ”
“Let me guess, it was you doing all the buying,” I
laughed. “And now there are two less shareholders out there who think you
should operate more like Lex Luthor.”
“Precisely.”
“You’re welcome.”
Grunt.
We drove in silence until we were over the
bridge, parked, and hit the rooftops.
“How long have you known?” I asked while we watched the
dealers congregating outside the nightclubs.
“Almost from the beginning. Alfred told me Nigma was
meeting you at the country club, and Flay saw you there. Said he was going
to come over and say hi. He’s ‘always happy to have a chat with that
charming Edward fellow,’ but you were with the Smeks, who he considers
pariahs and social climbers of the worst sort—there, the one in the Cherokee
jacket, he’s the supplier. Let’s go.”
I spent the next few minutes picking off the dealers
who ran while Batman nailed the supplier. Two made it into one of the
clubs, so I waited until I saw the supplier hoisted up onto a streetlight in
a Bat-net. That meant Batman was free and he’d be watching the door, so I
went inside. I found one, whispered a few threats—nothing medieval, just
creative things to do with my claws. His partner saw me with his buddy and
made for the door—right into Batman’s waiting fist, and my mousy playmate
decided to get as far away from that as he could—turning back right into
mine. Meow.
We took the rooftop route to Chinatown and Bruce
resumed his story: Eddie had dropped a receipt at the manor, a receipt for
The Club Room, so that was Batman’s next stop after the country club. He
learned that Eddie had been there with a couple that matched the Smeks’
description. They were obviously the key to whatever was going on, so
he checked them out—broke off the story at that point, because he spotted a
couple kids breaking into a car.
Once he had the Smeks as a starting point, he found
their websites and even found Eddie’s Vince Turner alias in their sales
records. He also found Oracle’s tracks exploring the sites from another
angle. She can hide her trail from anyone else, but not him—crappy news for
me, but I still find it rather wonderful. He’s Batman. And he’s cute when
he’s miffed.
He was miffed I had pulled Oracle into whatever was
going on, but he tried to downplay it. Psychobat’s never had the control
over her activities that he’d like, going all the way back to her Batgirl
days. Fortunately, we found a guy holding up a liquor store, and that
let him work out his aggression.
“So you didn’t have all the particulars of the con?” I
asked, once we reached Chinatown and were settled on a rooftop to count
DEMON minions.
“I did but it was irrelevant. The Smeks’ criminal
activities were the focus of my investigation, not…”
He trailed off, and I knew it wasn’t carrying the one
keeping track of the minions.
“Not?” I prodded.
“My focus was the Smeks’ activities, not Nigma pulling
you into a criminal enterprise,” he graveled.
And Oh, Sweet Mother of Bast, I should have known
that’s where this was going.
“Look, Bruce—” I whispered.
“Forget it,” he graveled. “Nigma made his point.
Electron 29.”
“Come again?”
“Curse or not, he’s the Riddler. He had to leave some
clue to what he was doing. Getting lost and coming to the house,
accidentally dropping a receipt, that was just circumstance, bad luck. He
had to deliberately send Batman a message, and that was it. The meat
of his con: copper, conductivity, electron 29.”
“No, no you’ve got a false scent there, lover. He got
all that from some show on the History Channel. Working with an actor, he
figured Matt needed lines to memorize, so he swiped a bunch of stuff from a
show called Modern Marvels that had an episode about copper, and I think the
rest came from a biography of Richard Feynman.”
He turned to me very slowly, the neon glow from the
street throwing an odd glow onto the far side of his mask as he said “No…
Selina… he didn’t. There are a thousand different ‘tales’ Nigma could have
told to separate the Smeks from their money. He chose the bogus inventor
and an invention rooted in the conductive properties of copper for a
reason. You’re ‘Electron 29,’ Kitten. You can go from taking down Joker to
helping Nigma to patrolling with me without taking a breath. It’s like you
don’t even notice.”
“That was his point?”
“Almost certainly.”
“That I’m an electron predisposed to flit back
and forth from one atom to the next? What kind of stupid riddle is that?!
Wait a minute, wait a minute, are you saying I’m the mark here? That
there was no grifter’s curse and that that pasty-faced balding weasel
decided to—”
“The objective of a con is 'something for
nothing,' correct? That’s the rationalization: you take someone who wants
something for nothing and give them nothing for something.”
“Yes.”
“Nigma did the opposite. You were giving him
‘something for nothing,’ helping him with his predicament when there was
nothing in it for you except the incidental fun you derive being
bad. Instead, he gave you something of value. An insight—what he imagines
is an insight at least.”
“That I’m electron 29.”
“Precisely.”
I looked around, uncertain what to make of it. I
checked the street. If there was a new DEMON minion lurking, I would have
certainly welcomed the opportunity to pummel one.
“Was there a curse?” I asked—I’m not really sure why I
thought he would know, but I couldn’t think what else to do.
“Is the curse real?” he huffed. “Certainly not,
superstitious nonsense. But you’re asking if Nigma believed he was cursed.
Probably. He did buy an outdated and defective phone from the Smeks’
website, so what he told you on that score is… probably true. And
once he saw your readiness to help him, he made the most of the
opportunity.”
“So I’m not the mark.”
“Probably not.”
“Are you?”
“He may have hoped to unnerve me with the ‘revelation’
about you, but no. I got something for nothing, the same as you.”
“What? The insight that I’m unreliable and disloyal?!”
“A criminal operation is out of business. What the
Smeks were doing may not be in Joker’s league, but they were cheating people
on a massive scale. They can’t do it anymore, they’re going to pay for
those crimes, and there are two less stockholders who think WE should
operate more like LexCorp. All things considered, I should send him a fruit
basket.”
I chuckled at that, but it still seemed terribly
unfinished somehow.
“A criminal operation is out of business,” I echoed.
“And two less stockholders that want you to emulate Luthor. If Eddie gets a
fruit basket, what do I get?”
“Two more rounds of town halls before the Tech Expo,”
he said instantly, like he was expecting the question.
“Oh gee, what fun,” I said lightly. It wasn’t cute
enough to warrant a lip twitch, but it produced one anyway.
“This round might be,” he said coolly. “Tokyo, Hong
Kong, Bangkok and then Berlin, Munich, Brussels, Dublin…” he paused. “And
Paris. We could do some shopping. Walk into the original Cartier through
the front door without… upsetting anyone.”
I looked up and caught him watching me right before his
eye flicked away. I let him think he got away with it and I didn’t notice,
but… we could do some shopping, I had to wonder.
© 2010
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