The Punchline Plot

[This is something that happened on the outskirts of Gotham in a coffee shop after Heath Ledger's Joker burned half the mob's money and before he did much else—he had time to stop for coffee and was out for a little fun . . . ]

I was typing when trouble broke out at the Starbucks on Portsrow Avenue. Eight big, armed guys led a guy in odd makeup and a purple suit inside. I heard someone call the one guy a clown loudly and get shot. The Joker had barely hit the news cycle. The Joker and three of the guys pulled out automatics, shot about six people including one of their own as I jumped to my feet screaming, "WAIT!"

No one was more surprised than me. I wasn't being brave; I was being spontaneous. Everyone stopped shooting and screaming and whatever else—diving for cover, running—and looked at me. I took one look at the guy dressed as a clown and said, "I haven't had my second cup yet!"

The Joker lowered his gun, looked over at the line, which he had emptied out, and said, "Is anyone gonna drink that?" He pointed his gun at a half-filled cup with a smear of marker on it. One barista got up off the floor uncertainly. "Yeah, make that one. It looks good. And make his – on me!" He waved the barista into motion and me forward with his gun. He drew a straight razor with his left hand and put it around my shoulders in a 'we're pals' manner. "What are you working on today?" He pocketed his gun.

"Fair market trading. Boring, really. The economics of supply and demand." I resolutely did not shrink back, realizing that he must be like a wild animal. I shouldn't let him sense fear.

The Joker made an incredulous, sympathetic face. He leaned around me as the barista finished his cup. "Make his a venti." He let me step up and order a tazo chai tea, venti. He took his cup, drank, choked, and spat it out on the floor, dropping the straight razor. "GOD, THAT'S HOT! Where's the manager?!" He drew his gun again, smashed the clear barrier in with it, peered in at the floor, and began to aim at one of the people on the floor.

"Wait!" At this point, I figured he was actually going to wait till I had my drink drank before he shot me dead, so maybe I could keep everyone else alive until then. "I'm doing all this work on fair trading. I should TEST it."

The Joker seized my jacket pocket and tore it away, taking my wallet. He opened it and looked at my license. "Like, how much is it worth to you to never visit your address?"

I held my face wooden despite the thought of the Joker in my house with my wife and children. "I don't know the market value of that, Joker. But since you stole my wallet to get my address . . . what about I refuse to press charges for that?"

The Joker blinked. He looked at the evidence in his hand. He threw it at one of his men. It bounced off the man's head and lay forgotten on the floor. He pocketed his gun again. He pulled out a knife and held it beside the left side of my face. "Okay, like how much is it worth to not kill you?"

The abrupt change of thought, that it might again only be me to die and not my wife and children, caused a wave of relief strong enough that in spite of myself, I looked a little happy. "Hmmm."

The Joker was a bit confused, especially as he saw my tablemate on the floor cross himself at that moment. "You're a religious man, aren't you? Is that why you aren't afraid to die?"

I blinked. "Maybe. By my standards, you should be VERY afraid of dying. Murder is pretty bad."

The Joker smiled at that. "What about making you afraid? Is that worth something?"

I thought for a moment. "That should be worth you leaving the lives and belongings of everyone here."

The Joker staggered, folding up the knife. "You drive a HARD BARGAIN. Let's see how well I haggle." He pocketed the knife. "You show me how to scare you to your core, and I, let's see—I murder only one more person here and steal from the dead."

"You're asking me to SUPPLY you with how to scare me on top of that? You AND your workers murder no one in this whole neighborhood ever again, and—yeah, you can steal from the dead."

"No deal!" The Joker pulled out his gun again.

"What WOULD be worth that?" I blurted out. My kids go to school here. My wife works here. "It's a small section of Gotham—less than ten blocks worth."

He looked startled at my question. I can only guess that my inquiry counted as interest in him and so stroked his ego.

"You do owe me a few answers. You asked me more questions."

He made a mock chastened look and then a shocked look. "Ohhh . . . ten WHOLE BLOCKS? No murdering or stealing in THIS WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD?! EVER?!" One of his own men laughed. The Joker shot him through the eye. "Wait. Did you mean my own men, too?"

I blinked. "I-don't intend to harbor your men from you, no."

The Joker nodded. "There's only one thing I can think of worth all THAT. Tell me how to scare—THE BAT. I've heard of him. He's someone that should be hard to scare. You wouldn't harbor him either, would you?"

"No need. You'd do crimes right outside the neighborhood until he came out anyway."

The Joker solemnly began to pace up and down, "True, true. You are wise to that. Tell you what. I promise not to trick you, like I add on I don't do anything like drop any buildings on your little neighborhood or blow up the gas main under it or push it off to sink in the bay like a baby Lex Luthor. But-you have less than one minute to answer or I kill you."He pulled up the dead arm of a man from the floor to see his watch. He cocked the gun.

I nodded. "I have an answer, but it will take more than a minute to explain."

The Joker looked at the watch, gave an impressed look, dropped the arm, and licked his lips. "Okay. Deal. Tell me. Hold it." He turned to the barista. "One grande house blend, no sugar or dairy, double shot of cinnamon. Oh. And decaf." He turned to me. "I shouldn't have too much excitement. That cinnamon? The way it burns but it's still good? I LOVE that! Okay, let's hear it."

I raised my eyebrows. "You're paying for that?"

"And the tazo?" asked the barista. He hadn't made it yet.

The Joker blinked, turned to the price list, and did an exaggerated double-take. "At THESE prices? I'M supposed to be the criminal here. I mean it's mostly hot water! . . . Okay, okay." He motioned one of his men forward, who produced two twenties and fell back to cover the door. The Joker accepted his coffee with a demure nod and turned to me as the barista began making my tazo. "Well?"

I motioned him forward and to one side away from everyone. The rest of our talking was done in whispers.

"To sweeten your side of the deal," I began, "I've come up with not just a little 'yipe' moment, but a gnawing, nagging fear that will keep him up days for a long time."

"Days?" he looked confused.

"We know he doesn't sleep at night, right?"

"You ARE smart. Go on."

"You have to pick a random location that means nothing in particular to you. Start a charity event, be it a homeless shelter for a week or a soup kitchen for a few days . . . anything that neighborhood might need. Make sure your fingerprints are all over it."

The Joker motioned over the door guard. "Sam, was it?"

Sam grunted affirmative.

"Price for me fifty costumes of doubles of me."

"No! You're not trying to get doubles, just clothes."

"Scratch that, Sam."

Sam grunted, notebook half out of a grubby pocket.

"Oh," said Joker, "I buy their loyalty and make them minions."

"No! You're not publicly connected. You make an effort to hide it. Just fail at hiding it."

"So he comes looking and finds a bomb in the basement, ready to blow everyone up?"

"No! There's no bombs, no bullets, no poisons. There's no crime. If anyone even gets mugged nearby you don't get revenge."

He paused. "You're thinking I become a folk hero? Become popular so people are on my side against the Bat?"

"No. Only the Bat even figures out what you've done. You hide it from most of your men."

"You want me to turn over a new leaf?"

I looked at him like an errant child. "I don't think you'll EVER convince anyone you're trying to change."

He frowned. "Then what's the point?"

I pointed at him. "That confusion, right there. You couldn't believe you would do anything like that for any reason other than to divert from a crime. Oh—for it to really work, you should carefully time it between other crimes so you're obviously not using it as a diversion. Do you realize how powerful that is?"

"No." The Joker looked genuinely baffled. Sam looked baffled, too, but, that wasn't saying much.

"Batman will go crazier than you're supposed to be trying to figure out this one thing that you tried to hide." I was on a roll, now. "He's always going to wonder what he missed. What were you REALLY up to? It's going to bother him until he comes to you and asks. And you know what you say? 'No one is all bad, Bats. Everyone does some good sometime. Don't tell anyone, okay?' That'll twist him up a little more. Suddenly you're not all bad, so is he really all good? The way to defeat your opposite, Joker, is to meet them in the middle and make them think it's their own idea. He'll accidentally let you go once, maybe. He'll pull a punch here or there that he wouldn't have otherwise. Because he's scared you'll not do more good. That he'll help the bad side somehow. He'll think more and act less out of fear and doubt. Doubt, as you know, is the opposite of action. He'll HESITATE at the wrong moment. That will be his undoing."

The Joker pondered this for a long moment. "What'll YOU say?"

"The truth. That I gave you an idea to save myself and this neighborhood. That I didn't help you plan a crime. That I hope Batman eventually does jail you because I'm a good guy and that I didn't want to be put in this position of helping the enemy. That I have to keep it a secret as part of the agreement."

He nodded. "That's goo—ood. Sam, did you get all that?"

"My pen's out of ink."

"Good help's so hard to find," said the Joker, and shot Sam. He walked out, followed by his remaining men, saying, "If our current thing doesn't work out, I should try that in a couple of weeks . . ."