Alfred had never considered himself a pessimist, but today
he had to wonder. It seemed like he was having a good day. Any objective third
party would think so. Yet he felt nothing. So far from enjoying it, he found
himself not trusting it. It really made him wonder if the years spent with
Master Bruce’s solitary brooding hadn’t rubbed off.
The day began with a cherished ritual that Alfred thought
he had performed for the last time: pressing the morning newspaper. Master
Bruce said he appreciated all the trouble Alfred had gone to preparing a digital
edition for him on a tablet, and he was sure he would find it useful later in
the day. But with his breakfast, he preferred print copies of the Gotham
Times and Daily Planet, just as he had always done. He didn’t
consider them to contain “old news” but worthy news. The trouble with
internet news, Bruce maintained, was that it had no unit cost. Newsprint cost
money. Running the presses cost money. The delivery system involving men and
trucks and networks of contracted newsstands which calculated the number of
copies they would accept with an eye to their own bottom line, it all had dollar
and cents costs that made everyone involved stop and think at
every step of the way. It forced editors to make choices about what stories
were fit to print and how many column inches they should receive. Those
judgment calls added value which news that was simply “newer” could never match,
simply because it had not proven itself passing through that gauntlet.
So Alfred began the day as he always had: pressing the
morning newspaper. He had placed it on the breakfast tray and proceeded to the
next pleasant surprise: the lack of any discernible aftermath to that appalling
Op Ed in the Gotham Observer. Alfred had spoken to Miss Selina only once
since she took the odious task off his hands showing it to Master Bruce, and she
had not mentioned his reaction. Alfred wasn’t sure what kind of response to
expect after a day of such disgraceful outrages in the press, but he was
prepared for some reaction—be it anger, bitterness or disappointment—that
would be distressing for him to witness. He loved Master Bruce dearly, and his
affection for Miss Selina grew by the day. Seeing either of them upset was
distressing, seeing both was downright painful. So Alfred had entered the
bedroom bracing for the worst… and he left pleasantly puzzled. Master Bruce
seemed his usual self; Miss Selina her ‘alternate’ usual self on those mornings
she was not disposed to wake yet. She would reach up for the largest pillow
available—a brocaded European square, most often—and pull it down over her head,
sometimes poking Master Bruce’s hip with her other hand as if he was personally
responsible for the existence of the sun, and often grumbling oaths which Alfred
thought it best not to acknowledge. In short, both seemed completely
unaffected by the previous days’ barrage of unwelcome news.
That alone would have been cause to rejoice, but the best
was yet to come. Rather than wait for him to make his casual pass through the
morning room so she could communicate any changes she wished to make in the
day’s menu, Miss Selina sought him out. She found him dusting in the sun room,
and it turned out she had no changes for the day but wanted to consult him about
a planned entertainment the following week. She and Master Bruce wished to host
a dinner for forty, at the penthouse immediately before the Air Ball.
“Are you up for the challenge?” she’d asked with that
impish grin of hers (which was Alfred’s first real introduction to what Batman
had been up against for all those years).
“Thirty-six would be more traditional,” Alfred said. Then,
realizing this could be seen as trying to reduce the workload, he hastily added,
“Or even forty-eight.”
“I know, multiples of twelve,” Selina nodded. “But this
isn’t about place settings; that’s for people a rung or two down. We’re
shooting for something else. ‘A dinner for thirty-six’ doesn’t trip off the
tongue; it doesn’t make a pretty headline.”
“And it doesn’t allude, with Machiavellian subtlety, to the
Four Hundred of the Gilded Age, miss,” Alfred said with a sudden glint of
understanding.
“You got it,” Selina winked. “These people live for
exclusivity, ever smaller circles and ever shorter lists. Everyone attending
the Air Ball is a Foundation donor, and within that group there are the ones in
the Social Register, the ones who are members of the Butterfield, the ones who
call him ‘Bruce’ but only behind his back, the ones who can call him Bruce to
his face… and the most exclusive subset of all, the ones who will be more ‘Bruce
Wayne guests’ than anyone else in the city that night, will be the nineteen
couples invited to dinner before the ball.”
Alfred’s first reaction was, naturally, that of the
butler entrusted with organizing this imposing affair. He said he would
consult his files and draw up a number of menu options, catering and service
recommendations, as well as a budget, and have these ready for Miss Selina’s
review within the hour. It was only when he went to the morning room with his
two best proposals in hand that the greater significance of the event sunk in.
He had slowed as he approached the door out of habit, but was still surprised
when he heard voices inside. He expected Miss Selina to be alone, but Master
Bruce was in there with her—and they were discussing the guest list with an
intensity of purpose that Alfred had only heard from the late Dr. and Mrs. Wayne
on a handful of occasions:
“What about the Gardners?” “Park Avenue Gardners or
River Place Gardners?” “River Place, Lawrence and Justine.” “Stick a pin in it
for now. I want to keep two slots at least for gay couples...”
Alfred had never considered himself a pessimist, but now he
had to wonder. The relaxed domesticity he’d noticed the day Bruce and Selina
returned from the movies was nothing compared to this. Bruce being happy in his
private life was the more important development, naturally, but it was one
Alfred had always believed was possible. Bruce assuming a leading role
in Gotham Society, not as camouflage for Batman but as Dr. Thomas and Martha
Van Geissen Wayne’s son, that was something he had given up hoping for.
But there it was. Hard as it was for Alfred to believe,
crossings were made throughout the morning between Bruce’s study and the morning
room. Alfred hadn’t seen anything like it since Dr. and Mrs. Wayne decided the
guest list for Bruce’s christening. Selina would have some idea and go across
the hall to tell him, and a short while later, something occurred to Bruce and
he crossed back to talk to Selina.
And each new occurrence made Alfred irritable rather
than jubilant. Each repetition made it seem more and more certain that the
miracle had actually occurred, that Bruce and Selina really were
functioning as Mr. and Mrs. Wayne, the arbiters of Gotham Society, and Alfred…
felt nothing. Had he really become such a cynic? Was hope so dead inside him
that he couldn’t work up a little enthusiasm for the answer to his prayers
playing out before his eyes?
“Bruce, how does the name Ashton-Larraby keep magically
reappearing on this list in your handwriting?”
“I put it under ‘Maybe.’”
They were in the study now. Bruce seated at the desk with Selina standing in
front of it, her back to the door and blocking Bruce’s view so that Alfred could
glance in without fear of being seen.
“They’re not a ‘Maybe,’ they’re a ‘No,’” she was
saying. “If they don’t live on Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue, Gracie Square or
Sutton Place, I don’t want to hear it. We already made one exception for the
Bantrees, and I’m still having second thoughts about it.”
“Because her jewelry’s too good,” Bruce said wearily.
“Yes. They’re old money and the gilt’s wearing thin since
the 80s. Assumption has to be that the real stones are long gone and replaced
by fakes.”
“You know that’s not true as well as I do. Liv would
mortgage her children before she sold her mother’s ruby.”
“Doesn’t matter what I know, it only matters how it
looks to someone like me who doesn’t know.”
Alfred affixed the back of Selina’s head with a suspicious
glare—a glare so similar to the one Batman used to direct at her, it drew
Bruce’s attention when his peripheral vision caught it in the mirror.
“Something to add, Alfred?” he asked, leaning back in his
chair to see around Selina’s shoulder. She turned to look at him too, and
Alfred gave a little cough as though it was his intention to be noticed the
entire time.
“My only thought, sir, is that, unless Miss Selina and
yourself have undergone a most alarming transformation into the most
objectionable type of snobs, one is forced to conclude that there is some other
criteria being employed to weigh the merits of potential guests. If there is an
ulterior motive behind this dinner party, one would prefer to be enlightened now
rather than later.”
Bruce and Selina looked at each other.
“You didn’t tell him?” they said in unison.
“But I thought you—” they said next.
Alfred stood patiently through several rounds of: “This is
really more your thing than mine—” and “Me? I just naturally figured you’d be
handling it—” before deciding they would never stop on their own.
“Perhaps,” Alfred said loud enough to command their
attention, “if only one of you were to speak at a time. Miss Selina,
would you say this party is more of a social entertainment or a crimefighting
operation?”
“Crimefighting,” Selina said, a hint of the chastened
schoolgirl in her tone.
“Very well then. In that case, it might be best if
Master Bruce were to continue with the explanation.”
“Fine,” Bruce said, a hint of the chastened but defiant
schoolboy in his. “The cat burglar is hitting the homes of Foundation donors
while they’re attending the fundraisers. He or she is going after ‘Wayne
guests.’ We’re giving them a new tier of Wayne guest, one that’s more
personal and much more exclusive. If the goal is to make me look bad, to strike
at Selina and I personally, then they’ve got to zero in on this group and not
those attending the Air Ball alone.”
“That’s why the subliminal hint of the 400 is so
important,” Selina said, picking up the narrative the moment Bruce paused. “The
more we put on airs, the bigger a target we are...”
“And Selina already profiled all the Foundation donors,
pinpointing who has the best jewelry from a cat burglar’s point of view…”
“So we pack the dinner party with guests that don’t…”
“Leaving him with only one clear target…”
“In a seemingly random assortment of PLUs...”
“Or at least, no more than two or three targets,” Bruce
said.
“Why do you not believe me when I tell you I can get it
down to one?” Selina asked with a gimlet look in her eye.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s building
contingencies into the plan,” Bruce said. “‘If the burglar chooses another
target, what would it be’ is like… ‘What will I do if the night I actually break
into the Egyptian wing, the security guard changes his route?’”
“I really need to teach you how to rob a museum properly so
you’ll stop saying things like that.”
Alfred coughed again, redirecting the conversation.
“Very well then,” he said. “If one understands correctly,
the criteria for selecting these guests is that they all appear plausible
choices to the outside world, yet all but one will not present desirable targets
to a jewel thief?”
“That and where they live. Proximity to the penthouse is a
thing,” Selina said. “I need to be able to get to the target apartment quickly
and catch our boy red-handed.”
Alfred pursed his lips and presented the same disapproving
glare that Bruce always saw when a Fop appearance was announced. It was novel,
for once, to not be the recipient.
“And how do you propose to reconcile this burglar-catching
disappearance with your obligations as hostess?” Alfred asked archly.
“Oh that’s easy,” Selina answered—in that carefree tone
Bruce also knew, the one she used to tell you she didn’t give a damn about your
disapproval. It was novel, for once, to not be on the receiving end of that
one, too. “Batman is going to show up to question me about the cat burglar,”
Selina continued. “Right as we’re sitting down to dinner. The lout. We’ll go
out on the balcony to talk, and he’ll block the guests’ view while I’m gone. I
go over the side, have my costume stored in Bruce’s office, and leave from
there.”
The novelty of the experience ended as Alfred’s eyes
flicked up with frightening minimalism to include Bruce in his glare of
disapproval.
“And how is that feat to be accomplished?” he asked
tersely.
“You’ll see that Dick and Barbara aren’t invited,” Bruce
said simply.
“I see,” Alfred said, resignedly. “Perhaps caviar should
then be substituted for the first course, to compensate the guests for being
used as dupes in a Batman and Catwoman operation.”
He knew it was too good to be true…
“Also the addition of a Sauternes and petit fours at the
end of the meal, to console them for the loss of the hostess.”
…and squelched his disappointment with the knowledge that
at least he wasn’t a pessimist.
The morning of the Air Ball, Selina awoke purring. Ned and
Charlotte Mandell were the couple she had chosen to be the cat burglar’s final
target, and she had been planning the robbery of their exquisite Fifth Avenue
mansion as if it was her own. There were some gorgeous Harry Winston
earrings— marquis and pear-shaped clusters each suspending a large pear-shaped
diamond: 12 carats on the right, 14 on the left—which Lottie would certainly be
wearing to the ball. That was a pity, but it was the price that had to be
paid. No lady of Lottie Mandell’s breeding would dream of wearing a necklace
with drop earrings like that, which meant the Van Cleef and Arpels diamond and
pearl number would still be in her safe. So would the diamond and ruby Chopard
she had worn to the Fire Ball, and probably that big opal cocktail ring—not
because it would be gauche to wear with the earrings, but because it really was
terribly ugly. The opal alone would bring enough to feed the tigers for three
months, Selina decided (although she didn’t like to think too much about
the proceeds of a heist before she had the goods in her hand.)
But the rest of the job she envisioned in detail—lingered
on the details—right down to the potential Bat-encounter… the flight options if
he made his long, point-eared shadow appearance in the first floor gallery, the
parlor floor drawing room or dining room, the third floor bedroom, or on the
roof… and a happy epilogue trying on the that beautiful Chopard ruby before
parting with it. She even dreamed about the theft—which led to the wake-up
purr, but also meant revising one part of her plan: if the Bat-encounter started
in the bedroom but Batman was blocking her path to the hall... She
worked that out on her way to the shower, pausing to wave at Mirror Bitch as she
passed. It was only as the shampoo flowed from her hair that she let the
mindset of the cat burglar wash away with it—to be replaced by the crimefighter
planning to trap him.
And that would begin with a visit to Bruce’s office. She
had no plan to work at the Foundation today, but she did make her regular
lunchtime visit to the 77th Floor. Lucius was leaving Bruce’s office
just as she approached the door, and he acknowledged her with a stream of polite but
emphatic muttering:
“’Don’t worry about it,’ he says. Gregorian Falstaff and a
bunch of his people moved into the building and what does Mr. Wayne have to say
on the matter? ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Less than a week after that PR coup
d’etat they pulled and they’re installed down there—a bunch of people we
didn’t hire—not ten feet from the conference room that’s hot-linked to Sub
Diego, meta-links to the whole corporate intranet—land doubles for Sub Diego
staff running around with free access to the 16th floor—and what does Bruce have
to say?”
“Don’t worry about it, Lucius.” This, said on cue and with
a wide ‘playing along’ grin as Bruce put an arm around Lucius’s shoulder and
walked him the rest of the way out the door. “It’ll be fine. Falstaff has made
the worst blunder imaginable: He thinks he’s won. Now I can dismantle him.”
“And how exactly are you planning to do that?” Lucius asked
archly.
“Don’t worry about it,” Bruce said, and shut the door in
his face.
“You better be careful there,” Selina advised. “I taught
him a lot of my best tricks, and he was no slouch to begin with. If he decides
you’re holding out on him and wants to snoop…”
“I am not worried about Lucius Fox hacking my Blackberry,”
Bruce assured her.
“I don’t think you ‘worry’ about anything,” Selina said
with a headshake.
“I’m worried about this,” he said, returning to the desk.
Grumbling that she was working her way into every corner
and cubbyhole of Batman’s operation and he’d soon have nothing left to call his
own but the contents of his utility belt, he opened a desk drawer. There was a
recessed pad with no markings, similar to the camouflaged fingerprint-scanner in
the private elevator which acted as the button for the Batcave. Bruce pressed
it with the pad of his index finger, and a latch clicked within the window. He
opened a panel of the wall beside it to reveal a perfectly situated recess on
the outside wall of the building—perfectly situated, that is, for one who
happened to be swinging by seventy-seven floors above street level and wanted a
spot to get out of the wind.
Bruce stepped into it, and it was only with that visual
reference that Selina could judge the space: about thirty inches wide, ninety
deep, like three phone booths lined up side by side.
“Sightlines are non-existent,” he said proudly. “From the
Moxton building, the Knickerbocker, the Trump, if you don’t know it’s here, it
looks like girder, shadow and window frame.”
“No kidding,” Selina said, following him out. “I never
noticed it, and in all modesty, if I don’t see a perfect entry point like
this…”
“Well, it’s not ‘an entry point’ for anyone but me,” Bruce
said quickly. “But you can use it tonight to change. You’ll be coming down
from the terrace, changing and being on your way. So there’s no need for you to
come into the office and no need to add your fingerprint to the access list.”
“But now that I know it’s here, you can’t use it to hide my
Christmas present,” Selina teased.
He grunted and showed her where to stow her costume. She
secured it. And then she took his hand playfully and lifted it to her mouth,
kissing his fingertip slowly as if she was scanning his fingerprint with her
lower lip.
“You haven’t asked if I’m ‘clear on the plan,’” she said
seductively.
He said nothing… which she didn’t think to find suspicious.
The rest of her preparations were in the penthouse. Alfred
had already arrived and said the caterers would be there soon. He would handle
everything relating to the dinner party, and Selina should “not trouble
herself,” which she correctly interpreted as “staying out of the way.” So she
returned to the car, took out her dress in its quilted garment bag, her makeup
case and—then it hit her: The only time she had dressed at the penthouse for a
formal party was the night of the MoMA reopening. She and Bruce had agreed
there was too much Batman/Catwoman baggage connected to the museum’s closing for
them to attend the reopening together, let alone dressing for it in the same
room. So she’d packed up her jewelry, her makeup, her dress and her cats, and
settled into the penthouse as if it was her old apartment. She lived there for
a day, dressed alone, and went alone to the party.
At the MoMA.
Now here she was again: bringing her dress, her makeup and
her jewelry, preparing to dress for a formal party in that penthouse bedroom.
This time she would not be alone. This time he would be right there behind her,
saying “Here, let me get that” in the same voice that once told her to stay away
from that Van Gogh. He would take her wrist, not with the implied threat of
batcuffs but to fasten a bracelet.
When she had a cat burglar to catch.
She closed her eyes and said a prayer to the stars that
watched over cats: Don’t let him be a jackass. Just for tonight, don’t let him
be a jackass.
Hours passed. When the time came, Selina started getting
dressed. Bruce came home, through the flurry of activity in the foyer, the
living room and dining room. Alfred stressed that he had everything in hand and
Bruce should not trouble himself. Unlike Selina, Bruce took this to mean asking
a lot of questions Alfred didn’t have time for. Alfred answered two before
telling Bruce his tuxedo was pressed and hanging in the bedroom. That
Bruce correctly interpreted as “Unless Joker is on the premises, remove the Fop
from my sight or you will never eat again.”
Bruce went into the bedroom to get ready, where Selina had
got as far as “the preliminaries,” which is to say she had put on the dress.
Bruce took one look at her, and simultaneously confirmed and dispelled her fears
about Bat/Cat echoes.
The dress she had chosen for the night was an ice blue Elie
Saab with a flouncy skirt. It wasn’t her usual style, and she didn’t think the
color suited her, but this wasn’t about looking nice sitting at the head of the
dinner table, or on the red carpet arriving at the ball, or swirling around the
dance floor. The dress wasn’t going to make it to any of those places, because
Batman was going to barge in and wreck the party. She was going to excuse
herself like a dignified hostess and go outside to deal with him, and that
flouncy skirt would blow around in the high wind on the terrace. If she left
Dick a length of the fabric to hold onto after she’d gone, anyone watching from
inside would catch the occasional bit of light blue fluttering behind the black
cape, adding to the illusion that she was still there.
Later. On the terrace later the skirt would blow around.
All it did in the still air of the bedroom was show a lot of leg. Bruce’s eyes
had riveted on the V at the top of her thigh where the wispy fabric parted
around it… It was an echo of Batman alright, but it didn’t evoke anything from
the MoMA. It was precisely the same taking in of a scene she had seen a
thousand times, scanning the big picture in a second with that quick mind of his
and then honing in on the most pertinent detail. The night it looked like this
was the night she had debuted the skirted costume. Then, as now, he’d taken in
the scene: the rooftop (or in this case, the bedroom) and her in an
instantaneous glance, and then he locked onto her leg as if drawn by a magnet.
Throughout the encounter (or in this case, throughout the process of putting on
his tuxedo, finding his cufflinks and tying his tie) his gaze returned. She
could almost feel it moving around the curve of her calf, so much so that it
almost tickled… She stifled a giggle as she felt it linger on the back of
her knee, but the great detective wasn’t observant enough to notice her
reaction.
“You like my dress?” she probed.
“Unusual color for you,” he said noncommittally—which
confirmed that he was more Batman at the moment than Bruce. The Batman of that
night who would never admit to noticing.
She explained about the terrace and choosing the color for
its high visibility. Bruce nodded, said it was a good idea, and then added:
“Of course for maximum visibility, white would be even
bette… never mind,” he broke off, remembering too late and glancing in the
mirror to see Selina’s reaction. The angry glare she gave her lipstick said it
all.
When they were last in Paris, walking along Rue François
and looking in the windows at Balmain, he had pointed out a dress that he
thought would suit her. She shook her head and said an evening gown like that
was meant for Pierre Balmain’s ideal: a pale, petite blonde getting out of a
limo at a European casino. A woman of Selina’s coloring, she declared, should
only wear head-to-toe white if she was getting married. At that precise moment
they were passing a street sign reading Rue François, and François being
the name of Selina’s old boyfriend, Bruce made a joke. It wasn’t a particularly
funny joke, but Selina had laughed. And then she confided that François was not
at all marriage-averse as Bruce’s joke had implied. If she had wanted—and as he
had twice reminded her since—she would be the Comtesse de Poulignac now.
Bruce’s focus shifted from Selina back to his own
reflection. He found himself glaring at his chin. The lower half of his face,
the parts exposed by the mask. Batman’s mouth which had uttered that idiotic
non-proposal he would never stop paying for. He angrily ripped off his tie and
unbuttoned the top button. “I’m going to shave,” he snarled, stalking off to the
bathroom.
Despite being raised in Wayne Manor, Dick had not been
subjected to the full curriculum of upper class life the way Bruce was, and
certain nuances still escaped him. He knew, for example, that the time engraved
on the invitation to a charity ball was not to be taken literally, but he hadn’t
realized that a dinner party before the ball was another matter, that a dinner
given by the host and hostess was practically a sacred trust, and that no guest
so honored would dream of coming late. So he misjudged the time when Batman
should arrive at the Wayne penthouse to accost Selina Kyle. Rather than finding
everyone sitting down to dinner, he found the first course finished and the
second well underway.
It took nothing away from his entrance. If anything the
dramatic impact was heightened as one diner after another fell silent, and that
silence was broken by the odd clink of a fork set down without precision because
Theta Stanton-Brown wasn’t looking at what she was doing. Because she was
staring—as everyone was now—at the imposing caped figure who had entered the
room uninvited.
“Catwoman,” he said in his passable facsimile of the
Bat-gravel. “Excuse me, Miss Kyle, I’m sorry to interrupt your evening,
but I have some questions about this new cat burglar and what’s been happening
around the Foundation galas. If you could spare a few moments.”
Everyone’s heart thumped.
Selina had as much theatre in her soul as the next Rogue,
and she let the silence hold, her eyes locked onto the masked man’s, the tension
building…
Just long enough. Then she broke eye contact and started
to rise from her chair… A gracious smile for Frank Endicott on her right, they
would finish their conversation later—she simply had to hear the rest of
his story about Dubai—then a word to the table at large, apologizing for the
interruption and begging everyone to please go on with—
“No,” a hard, masculine voice sounded the moment Selina
started to rise. She froze, some syllable frozen on her lips as the thought
behind it vaporized with shock.
Bruce was already standing.
“This is my house,” he said, turning away from the table to
face Batman. “These are my guests, Selina is my companion, and it is my
Foundation you’re speaking of. Any questions you have, I will answer.
And anything you have to say, you’ll say to me.”
“Bruce, I really think,” Selina began—only to be silenced
by that flash of Tiger-Bruce she’d seen with Falstaff.
“Don’t be silly, darling,” he said, crossing to her end of
the table in a few quick strides and slipping his arm around her waist. “This
isn’t the kind of thing you should worry about,” he said, as if it was some
intricacy of non-profit tax law and not Batman, Gotham’s Dark Knight,
expecting to question Catwoman about a cat burglar.
Trapped, Selina’s eyes delivered threats that wouldn’t be
uttered aloud even if they were alone.
Bruce answered with a steely glint of long ago rooftops.
Checkmate, it said, with the calm finality of one who doesn’t need to
bellow or threaten because he’s already won.
“Take care of our guests and go on to the ball,” he said.
“I’ll catch up with you as soon as it’s finished.”
At the same time Bruce was leading an astonished Batman out
to the terrace of the Wayne penthouse, a darkly clad figure clicked a stopwatch
and proceeded at a brisk place down 78th Street into the blind spot
of the Fifth Avenue traffic camera. As Bruce was climbing over the side
shielded from view by Batman’s cape, the figure was firing a grappling hook to a
flagpole. As Bruce entered the hidden niche outside his office to retrieve his
costume, a dark silhouette was emerging from the shadow between pilasters to
climb the building four doors down from his target.
He paused as a siren sounded… not the full siren of a
passing car, only a quick warning wail. Then silence… He resumed.
It was not necessary to reach the roof of this towering
monstrosity, only the 24th Floor, from which he could reach the roof
of its 23-story neighbor, from which he could repel down to the modest six-story
residence of Ned and Charlotte Mandell. Its Phoenix might take time, but like
most old buildings of its kind, there was ample footing on its wide ledges… As
it happened, this particular Phoenix still used the default configuration
shipped from the factory, so it required nothing more than a pre-programmed
keycard inserted into the base and he was inside.
That left only a pair of rotating cameras to defeat before
he could get to the safe, cameras that each had an iris which functioned like a
human eye: widening in the dark to take in more light, contracting in brightness
to protect itself. A few pulses from the outrageously expensive but undeniably
useful little box obtained from a Genoa “watchmaker” would care of that: driving
the camera to its brightest setting and stalling it there, with an iris too
small to register anything in a darkened room. The only trick was coming at the
first camera to deliver the pulse without being detected by the second, which is
why he’d come in a window on the top floor. The semi-circular staircase was
just as pictured in Architectural Digest, and it was with some satisfaction that
he attached his gear to the wrought iron railing. It wasn’t often you found
original features like this intact, and it was faster than driving his own
support spikes into the plaster.
He descended to a point midway between the fourth and fifth
floors, which seemed the optimal distance from the target cameras. Aimed and
pulsed. Aimed and pulsed. Then dropped to the landing with a satisfied grunt.
The library was to his right and the master bedroom to his left. Both had a
safe, but the one with the jewelry was in the bedroom, behind the painting of
that poor girl in Victorian dress.
He entered the bedroom suite, noted the empty Harry Winston
box on the vanity—that would be the earrings Mrs. Mandell was wearing
tonight—and a mahogany “tea chest” style jewelry box which would contain her
everyday pieces. It had the kind of pedestrian lock that wouldn’t stop a
housemaid, which the lady evidently knew since she left the key in the lock
with a pair of decorative brocaded tassels hanging from it.
He shrugged and proceeded to the painting.
That poor girl. Nice enough dress, nice enough hair, but
the artist had not mastered portraying a human face. After seeing this picture
so many times through a scope, the thief could not resist taking an extra
moment, now that he was so close, to try and figure out what was wrong with it.
Was it her eyes? Her nose? Her mouth? Perhaps all three. It was certainly a
very bad painting. And, he was sorry to see, quite dusty. The frame was clean
where it had been handled to get to the safe, but the background behind that
poor ugly girl’s head was simply puddled with dust.
He shrugged, deciding these were very odd people. They
probably ordered their maid not to dust it, he guessed. People have very silly
ideas about their safes being secret, as if there could be any other reason to
have such a wretched painting as this hanging in one’s bedroom.
The safe was a Clarkston-O’Keefe, which meant the Mandells
had better judgment about security than they did Victorian portraiture. It took
twelve minutes to get all six digits of the combination and another three to put
them in the right order. But that was the kind of challenge that made a job
rewarding, after all.
And then, with an inhale of the deepest satisfaction, he
depressed the handle and opened the door. A Chopard box, a VCA and a
non-descript leather one. He had opened the first two and dumped the contents
into his satchel when the long imposing shadow snuffed out what little light
there was in the room.
“Francois de Poulignac,” a deep voice
graveled in the darkness. Then the shadow receded to form the pointy-eared,
scallop-caped silhouette known throughout the world. Through the darkness, one
could just make out movement of the right hand fingertips moving gently over the
left knuckles, slowly and thoughtfully, the way a winemaker caresses a glass
containing a great vintage. “I’m Batman,” he said.
To be continued…
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