Jonathan Crane thinks himself a patient man. He wasn't (isn't) the type of person to allow a simple matter of having to wait in line for a cup of coffee to disturb him, but even a patient man has limits. That's the problem with Gotham, he thinks out loud to himself, as in any other large faceless urban sprawl it was populated by mindless thrugs that mistake manners for weakness.
He just wanted a cup of coffee from his favorite diner; a hole in the wall place dealing mostly in take away conveniently located a block down from Robinson Park where he was headed - just a cup of coffee really, in a paper cup, black, no creamer, no sugar, no trouble, and no fuss. He was about to place his order with Jeanne at the counter (lovely Asian girl works there after school says she's saving for college), when he stopped for a moment to help retrieve a pacifier for the baby the lady waiting in line behind him carrying had dropped on the floor.
Next he knows some Armani wearing upstart with slicked back hair and cell phone fixed firmly to ear bumps him off the queue. He first thought it was a mistake, the man had not seen him in line so he starts off with a polite explanation – "Excuse me, I was here first." – But he finds himself speaking into empty space as the man pointedly ignores him and continues yakking even louder into the cell phone. He tries again and this time the man gets off the phone and shouts at him vulgarly in public – "Shut your trap up old man, can't you see I'm on the God Dammed phone."
I suppose, Crane thinks, that was the provincial straw that broke the camel's back, to be called an old man. The man in his flashy designer suit had assumed due to the way he spoke and dressed that he was mild manned and easily cowed, a banker, or an accountant perhaps. Taking the look of Crane in one glance and writing him off as nothing more dangerous than a professional paper pusher. How trite.
The man never saw the hand coming up hard and fast, the long boney fingers going for the eyes. Crane quietly shakes his head as he looks at his grime stained gloves, a new pair of the softest leather ruined and he won't ever be able to visit the diner again not after losing his temper in front of all those people. His pride wouldn't let him. Crane thought it unbecoming to even raise his voice in public. It was a shame really it was so difficult to find a place in Gotham that did a roast beef sandwich properly, one that came with a choice of seeded or plain Italian bread, topped with fresh mozzarella, fried eggplant, and au jus. But the man did scream though, scream, and cry out to all the saints in heaven for his mother like the pathetic frighten worm that he was; old man indeed, and that to Crane was priceless.
Crane pulls his wool overcoat tighter as he settles down on one of the wrought iron benches that dot the landscape of Robinson Park. He's arranged to meet an old friend here, and he expects to have to wait a while. Crane believes it is a woman's prerogative to be fashionably late.
Robinson Park is quiet this time of the year except for a few die hard joggers, those that run in all seasons come hail and high water for their adrenaline fix. Crane decides he rather likes it, this peace and quiet after the hustle and bustle of summer. It was early spring 2 years back that they pulled the first body out of the lake that sits in the heart of Robinson Park. A little girl no more than nine her limp black hair still tied up in little pigtails. They caught him eventually of course; Batwoman with help from an unexpected quarter. The Gotham PD was as expected too embroiled in their petty office politics to be of any use in the matter.
Crane stands and smiles as he spies her coming, he has not seen her for 2 years since their time together in Cancun with Victor Fries. She looks radiantly wonderful like a breath of fresh air although inappropriately dressed for the chilly weather in a floral dress and stiletto heels, her golden sheared mink coat left carelessly open. He remembers to take off his soiled glove before extending his hand as he calls out a familiar greeting to her - "Dr Isley, how nice to see you again."
Crane is well acquainted with the gossip in the underground; he understands that Pamela Isley has since her salad days with him and Victor Fries on the lam acquired a protector. Person or persons unknown as the case may be with the political clout to weed out any obstacles to her safe discreet return to Gotham after they had left Arkham together in less than favorable circumstances, and the money to keep her very comfortably in furs and Manolo Blahnik heels. Whoever her protector was, Crane remarks dryly to himself, Isley has learned admirably not to bite the hand that feeds her. Gone was the feral wild child-woman persona, in its place a keen eye and firm hand had lovingly pruned and shaped until the result was as exquisite as bonsai.
Pamela Isley was depending on whom you chose to believe either a monster or merely misunderstood. Crane believed the truth was somewhere in between, like one cursed by the Gods Isley's capacity to do great things was dwarf only by her caprice and insolent indifference. Crane always found it personally ironical that an individual with the talent to feed an entire city the size of Gotham from 30 odd blocks of neglected parkland, had no other ambition other than tending to a hideous poisonous rose, engaging in adolescent acts of corporate sabotage and snuggling up with other women. Unlike the others, Crane had never found tales of Isley's alleged homosexuality titillating.
"Professor Crane, how nice to see you again too" – Isley replies as she shakes his hand warmly. She smells wonderful, Crane thinks, of citrus and warm summer afternoons and new leather bound books. He notices despite himself that she is not wearing anything under her dress, her taut breasts hard in the cold forming stiff peaks in the soft material. He is well aware of the effect Pamela Isley has on members of his sex as well as certain members of her own.
It's an old trick of nature; plants do it all the time. The pitcher plant endemic in Asia emits a sweet smell which mimics that of nectar to draw its prey, so why shouldn't Pamela Isley, Crane reasons as he allows himself momentarily to enjoy the high of being in the company of a beautiful desirable woman. After all, as his father was often heard to say, we all have to eat; it was as they say a dog eating dog world. Strange how smells have the ability to invoke long forgotten memories; Crane hadn't thought about his father in years.
Ever conscious of expected social niceties Crane tells Isley how wonderful she looks, how she has blossomed on her return to Gotham as they settle down comfortably next to each other on the park bench. A passing jogger may easily have mistake them to be father and daughter having a serious quiet discussion, perhaps talking about the father's objections to a young but not eligible man the woman was seeing. Their heads bent close together almost intimately.
Isley smiles, nods and returns him the compliment. She knows that Crane will in due course ask about the unfortunate young man whose arm was broken. The young man was nothing more than a street punk of course, one of the many that hung out all hours of the day in the park sniffing glue and drinking firewater out of paper bags. His name was Carl, and like all lost children who claim sanctuary from the streets of Gotham, he belonged to her.
In all fairness, Crane had not wanted any trouble, just some information on the best way to get in touch with an old friend. He had ever offered to pay but like today at the diner, some people just don't understand that men of a certain vintage don't take kindly to being abused with foul language much less threatened with a switchblade.
Crane didn't need to break the boy's arm of course or do the other things he did, but someone had to impress on the petty playground tyrant the true meaning of fear and loathing and like any good teacher Crane took that burden upon himself. Crane knew that Isley would not be too put out by what he felt he had to do. Granted she has this past 2 years made significant strides in her dress sense and personal hygiene; no longer going round clad in a silly tunic of leaves or bathing out in the open in the fetid waters of the lake, but he could see that there was still a deep vein of misandry running through the core of her. Unlike an arm or a leg, some things you can never prune or trim away.
Despite his delight in being given an opportunity to clear the air about that misunderstanding, his visit today is not social, but business. "I have news that may be of interest to you." - He starts and when he finishes Isley is no longer smiling. The reaction was not unexpected but then distasteful news of this nature never elicits a positive response, Crane might as well have told Isley that Harleen Quinzel was waiting for her in bed at home eager for them to kiss and make out.
Crane often marvels about the synchronicity of events that lead from Robinson Park to Arkham and back now again to Robinson Park, whose dark roots stretch back, even further to before he became the entity which calls itself Scarecrow and she reborn screaming back into the world as Poison Ivy. It was as Jervis Tetch would have said "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards."
He puts in all down to the period of madness called the Cold War, where the Great Russian Bear was the symbol of all that was wrong and evil. In hindsight, with what was to come after, the Cold War could be looked upon with nostalgia as a time when the enemy was at least known; an external threat that had no bearing in towns and cities where children played in the streets unmolested and people called out to each other through open doors and windows as they went about their business. Now the enemy dwells within under the guise of neighbors, colleagues, and sometimes even friends. Children die alone and forgotten in the streets and no one calls out anymore because no one listens.
He remembers the day when they first walked into his office; he could never forgot it even if he wanted to so seared it was into the fabric of his memory along with the abandonment of his mother's death, the triumph of graduating magna cum laude and the modification of first teaching position.
They were two men in dark glasses neatly dressed in identical dark suits; the provincial men in black. They came to him because he was the best and they offered him the unique opportunity to actualize his research into physical reality. Crane was then a Distinguished Chair, having fought his way tooth and nail up the academic ladder. He had nothing to recommend him, no long standing family connections, no powerful backers, nothing but a gut-churning fear fueled by the deprivation and humiliation of a dirt poor childhood. Perhaps that was his problem, his acute hunger and need to prove himself over and over again.
He soon discovers that he has become part of a top secret military initiative to recruit the finest minds to work on projects of national importance, but in reality to develop new and terrifying chemical and biological tools that may be applied to high density urban warfare. His fear toxin was the love child of one such project. He has never told Isley before but he met Jason Woodrue once under professional circumstances. Woodrue had been recruited to head a concurrent project in Seattle to develop and test anti-venom that would have permitted shock troops to operate in contaminated environments. It was the same year Isley applied to work under Woodrue for her dissertation.
He doesn't know when it all started to go sour, when his backers decided that he had crossed the line from asset into liability. He had justified to them the necessity of using live human subjects to test the toxin, and they agreed, giving him unlimited access to scores of young raw recruits. Fit, muscular young men by the dozen for Professor Crane.
But fear you see is a strange creature it lingers in the back of your eyes in the small of your brain until it catches fire and if you add an accelerant it quickly becomes a wildfire consuming everything in its path. The suicides started slowly, one or two men out of each batch. At first they put it down as a statistical normalcy, it was to be expected that one or two of the participants out of each batch of volunteers would have existing underlying psychological problems that would have been exacerbated by the toxin. But then the numbers started snowballing, as young physically fit young men with no previous mental health issues started throwing themselves like lemmings under trains, hurling themselves like wingless birds out of open windows and acquiring a taste for eating hot steel. The toxin was a great success, but what use was a toxin that had no antidote? So the powers-that-be started looking north towards Seattle for an answer.
Isley frowns – "Have you seen the recording?" Crane pauses a moment to correctly frame his response before replying in a kindly voice – "They released a trailer intended for interested buyers, and I've seen it. It appears genuine."
"Describe what you're seen to me." – Isley asks her voice strangely calm and collected. She's not surprised, Crane notes, that Woodrue made a recording so she has no illusions about what kind of a sick bastard he was. "Of course you're in it, strapped upright into some metal frame. You are unclothed and barely conscious. You are bleeding through needle tracks in your arms and neck. There are bruises on your face; welts on your body. Woodrue is standing next to you speaking to the camera. He laughs and kisses you good bye on your forehead before snapping your neck. I can only sumise by the way your head is left hanging that he broke it."
They are silent for a while, as Crane gives Isley time to digest what he has just told her.
Pamela Isley was once considered along with Alex Holland and Phil Silverman one of Jason Woodrue's enfant terrible. They were lauded as wizards, nothing was sacred to them and their science; they were young and drunk on their own power to destroy and remake the world in their own images. In the end, the choices they made destroyed each and every one of them.
Isley was the first. She was engaged in a clandestine affair with Jason Woodrue, and when she proved to be over demanding he turned on her. His masters were demanding anti-venom that could counter the effects of Crane's fear toxin, and in Isley he found the perfectly pliant guinea pig. No one knows what he did to her or for how long. She simply disappeared one day. Her parents were deceased and her boy friend didn't care enough to ask. It was Silverman who eventually reported her missing. He was the kindest of the three, and the one left most unscathed by his contact with Jason Woodrue. Years later after Isley had surrendered to her madness and Holland lost himself to the Green; Silverman would find himself walking down the same old familiar path that Woodrue once took, synchronicity would see him serving the interests of men not unlike those of his teacher, but unlike Woodrue they would find him and kill him in the end.
Isley was eventually found wandering naked and amnesic in a construction site off a wooded area, there was speculation that she was buried unconscious but alive by her captor(s) in a shallow grave and left for dead. But Crane knows that Woodrue would have made sure Isley was dead before disposing of her. Woodrue was neither careless nor stupid. But you can't kill a plant by snapping off its top.
Isley spent time in and out of hospitals medical and mental before returning to school, but by then Woodrue had disappeared; resigned his position and moved East with his research. Woodrue's backers never got their promised anti-venom and that made their investment in Jonathan Crane worthless. If Crane was ever to trace the interlocking lines of synchronicity, he would come to realize that Woodrue's failure to deliver was the defining moment when it all started souring. What use was a toxin with no antidote? None and Crane passed from being an asset to a liability.
"What is your interest in this?" – Crane looks up to find Isley looking straight at him with those curious green eyes of hers. He cannot tell with any certainty what she is thinking or feeling. She is neither plant nor animal, and Crane suspects that she may no longer be capable of the full range of human emotions. Rage definitely, desire positively but jealousy, fidelity and love? He doubts if Isley herself knows or cares.
"They have your recording and some of my research. Notebooks from a long time back." – Crane answers – " I want my research back and I believe that you would want what is yours back too. I thought we might cooperate."
*** Please leave a review. To be Continued