Promise: The Batman Universe creates enough characters on it's own, so between the plot, the flashbacks, and the refrences there will be plent to choose from to satisfy those who can't stand the usage of the dreaded OC.
Key:
Whud Up Bs?: Harv/Two Face thoughts/mind-chat
Hello everyone!: Harvey's thoughts/mind-chat
Greetings and felicitations my dear Ladies (and gents-_-#).: Edward Nygma's thoughts.
If I owned this, I'd be swimming in my pools of money Al la Scrooge McDuck. As it stands, I don't even own a shower.: Author commentary
xxXxx
There were lots of things that drove him mad. Crowds, waiting in line, cheap neckties, people without ethics, the voice that lived inside his head and ate his neighbors' food-but at the very top of it was being late for court.
Harvey loathed it, totally, thoroughly loathed it.
If he got to the courthouse looking like an escaped mental patient, as he sometimes did, he took time to piece himself back together. There was no way on god's green earth he'd appear before a judge, unless he was the quintessence of cool. After a trip to the men's room, his visage would be flawless; every strand of his golden blonde hair would be in place. The lengths of his navy blue Canali trousers lead to the very best in A. Testoni steel-toed shoes; his documents would be in order, his arguments honed and poised for the attack. At the very least, he'd have a Charvet clasped snugly around his neck. He believed that an immaculate appearance bespoke an orderly mind.
But early timelines and flawless appearances might not be possible today.
No, on this unexpectedly sweltering first Friday in November, Harvey was late and he was a mess. It wasn't really his fault. His sports car should have started even though he'd left the vanity light on all night: an empty cab should have been available in front of his office, even though it was rush hour. His fellow passengers herded on to the PATH commuter train should have given him more room, even though there was not an extra inch of space and the blonde chick behind him seemed to have trouble removing herself from his butt. When without explanation the train stopped short of his station and sat in the tunnel for ten minutes, when he discovered he had somehow somewhere lost his cell, when the train finally lurched forward and the girl 'accidentally' grabbed a hold of his…key…to 'steady' herself...well, no wonder he was sweating, agitated and thoroughly ticked off when he got to the courthouse. Not the best frame of mind when arguing a high-profile civil rights case before a jury and a federal judge, a case close to his heart, and one he was determined to didn't like people being treated unfairly; it was as simple as that. His attitude started early. In his freshman year of college, Harvey and his friend Matthew applied for part-time jobs at a new coffee shop near Gotham University where they were both attended. Harvey was hired, but Matthew, who was Jewish, was not.
Injustice! Screamed Harvey's soul.
He vowed to fight, and fight he did. He organized a boycott of the store, demonstrated in front of it with posters accusing the owners of racist hiring practices, and got the local television station to run a segment about it on the evening news. And he got a better job. Harvey and Matthew were both hired as counselors at the local community center by the director, who was impressed with his activism.
Now four years out of law school, Harvey had earned a reputation as a tenacious fighter for the underdog. He had taken and won cases for the socially disadvantaged and disenfranchised, the kind of clients white-bread law firms considered beneath them. Lawyers wearing Brioni suits and club ties didn't relate well to clients in baggy jeans with tattoos and body piercing, though he-even in Canali, Charvet, and Testoni-had the knack. Besides, Harvey's clients couldn't afford to pay over $600 dollars an hour. Often they paid little or nothing. If he won their cases, he took a third of the awards. Harvey was prepared to raise hell again, this time at the wrongful-death of Maidali Billini-Duarte.
As he waited to go through the metal detectors, he regained his composure, for he had enough time to freshen up before court resumed-less than ten minuets, but enough. He was ready. He knew the case inside and out, having memorized the facts so thoroughly he might have been at the crime scene himself. The events central to the Billini-Duarte case had unfolded in a matter of minutes, but it was enough time to leave a family heartbroken, a city torn apart and a police force accused of racism and brutality.
Gotham, New York, November 25, 2007.
Maidali Billini-Duarte walks into Steinlesss, the last department store open downtown. She needs a birthday present for her grandmother.
Maidali, her grandmother's adored Mai, is the daughter of emigrants from the Dominican Republic who have just moved from Miami to Newark.
The store clerk, who is white, accuses Mai of shoplifting a $49 silk scarf. Mai denies it. Voices are raised.
Security is called.
Mai gets agitated. She is told to calm down. She does not.
The police arrive within minutes. Mai's tote bag is searched; a scarf is found, price dangling. She says the clerk planted it there, swears it on the Virgin of Guadalupe. No one believes her.
The police take her outside, try to arrest her. Mai resists.
She lashes out.
Her parents will testify this is completely out of character. In the melee, one officer takes a knee to the groin; another's nose is bloodied.
Back up arrives.
Now there are six policemen on the sidewalk, none of them weighing less than 190 lbs. Mai, at 4 feet 9 inches, weighs 103.
Later, no one can say who was responsible when her head struck the pavement.
As police but her in the squad car, they realize she is unconscious. At the hospital, Maidali Billini-Duarte is declared brain dead.
She is nineteen years old.
Injustice!
Harvey had taken on the case two months later, when Maidali's parents arrived in his office with childhood pictures and righteous indignation. They had come to America for a better life, they said, and the people sworn to protect Mai had murdered her instead.
Here was a picture of Mai dressed in white for her first communion, and in a lacy gown for her quinceañera. And if Harvey needed further convincing, there on their lap was little Sancia-their one-year-old granddaughter, Mai's daughter-destined to grow up without a mother.
Though no amount of money would bring their daughter back, they wanted the people who killed her to pay.
Harvey had jumped onto the case with his usual zeal. He has deposed the cops, the witnesses, and the store employees.
There was no question as to the facts: Maidali had struggled, fallen, and died. His forensic pathologist had agreed with the state medical examiner on the cause of Mai's death: A blow to the head resulting in subdural hemorrhage. Mai's parents and grandmother had been simple but eloquent in their testimony.
Their Mai was a good girl,
Religious,
Never done anything wrong before,
Let alone stealing,
It was an exaggeration, Harvey knew, no one was perfect, but had rested his case, secure in the knowledge that the jury's sympathy was with his clients. Let the opposing council try to justify the cops' actions.
He would use whatever they said to rip them apart in his closing arguments.
xxXxx
When Harvey went through the metal detectors, an alarm beeped. The federal marshal waved a wand down the length of his body, stopping at his Flex Link, slip-on style, Soft Genuine leather, Italian designer steel-toed shoes. "You gotta stop wearing these, Harv," she sighed, "I've told you a thousand times there's metal in them."
"Just testing you, Diane." Harvey grinned flirtatiously. "Besides, they go with my outfit."
Great pickup line, nothing strokes the fires faster than a man who reflects more on his clothes than his woman. The voice sneered, whether awoken by the sound of its name or an attractive woman Harvey didn't know or particularly care. If he failed to acknowledge it, perhaps it would go away.
Good-looking broad, It continued, undeterred. But I doubt she goes for closet Hundred-and-Seventy-Fivers*. Try not to cry when she rejects you. It makes me look bad.
As if I'd get rejected. I wasn't called the Apollo for nothing. Harvey smirked, forgetting he had been attempting to ignore the other. But then, I wouldn't expect an aggressive lout with the intelligence of a four-year-old and the sexual sophistication of a donkey to remember that.
The voice chuckled, knives on a blackboard. You talk alot of shit for a man who hasn't been laid since his wife left when she couldn't handle the clothing costs.
Harvey growled internally. We both know that's not the reason she left.
He felt it shrug, Then why'd she bitch about it to the shrinky dinks?
You brought it up Harvey said.
bunny-boiler didn't need an assist. It grunted. You saw her performance; she had no trouble railing our sins in court.
Her attorney believed it provoked more sympathy from the judge. He said and went back to ignoring the other. He walked along the green-and-white marble floor of the courthouse's impressive rotunda and headed upstairs to the men's room. Harvey fixed his face, using liberal amounts of the silk-enriched shine reduction powder he kept in his briefcase for emergencies, smoothed the cerise and aureate herringbone pattern vest, and proceeded ransacking his hair with a Mason Pearson comb. At thirty-two, he knew some of his colleagues thought he wore killer shoes and bright colors to stand out- but that wasn't totally accurate. His clothes were a kind of armor, a talisman. They declared he was someone who made bold decisions and was confident and comfortable in himself. Your clothes not only represent who you are, they also say what you want to be. When he became a trial lawyer, the philosophy served him well. He knew instinctively that juries would be more inclined to believe a well-dressed man than another bloody newbie trying to pass himself off as a pro in a colored bow tie and boring low-healed black shoes with a matching shape-less black suit.
He shuddered. Never wear color with black; it makes the color look cheap and the black look boring.
His parents, in their own ways, had taught him to buy the best clothing he could afford, even if it meant a never-ending mantra of cheap noodles at mealtimes. While he still feasted on Manchu Wok many nights, he ate it, if alone, in a midnight blue worsted vicuña bathrobe. His family was proud of him.
Proud? Poor lil' Harvykins, abused as a babe, he longs for the attention he never got. Now as an adult he has the ability to please Mommy and Daddy by starving himself like a REAL man. Proud. Hah!
Harvey frowned and disregarded the impulse to take his own head and slam it repeatedly into the mirror he was inspecting. He instead examined himself one last time, aware of his flaws-
Owing to his healthy appetite for frappachinos but mostly his 6-feet-4-inch height, he wore a suppressed-chest 40 rather than the 34 he fantasized; also, there was a small cleft at the edge of his chin, a genetic inheritance from his father he hadn't the nerve to fix with plastic surgery.
-but reasonably satisfied.
Oh Gucci, is that a pimple?
Ignore him. Ignore him. He repeated to himself under his breath.
His cheekbones were good-he got those from his mother-and the fire in his eyes, the joy of battle, was his alone.
A stranger in the courtroom might assume he was someone's client-another society playboy. An opposing lawyer might treat him as a little lost mix-breed puppy that had wandered in and crapped all over the carpeting-until he presented his case that is.
Then they realize you're a bleating card-carrying ass-licker.
Who has never lost a case. He said smugly.
First time for everything. The voice said.
Harvey remembered to pin a small beckoning cat lapel inside his suit jacket for luck, something his grandmother had taught him to do, just in case. The voice would be silent during the trial, not due to the effectiveness of the charm, but the result of their longstanding treaty: It remained silent during trials, he bought it steak.
He was taking no chances; no one would cast an evil eye on him, not today-He needed to win. He entered the courtroom-a striking space with red velour jurors' chairs and blue carpet-and took his place at the massive oak plaintiff's table.
Hope you lose.
Two minutes later, the court was in session.
xxXxx
"The defense calls Dr. Edward E. Nygma."
Edward Nygma
Maybe he was why Harvey felt so edgy.
He had met him last April, when he needed a second autopsy in the Gabriel Williams shooting and had arranged to helicopter him to a New Jersey field next to the morgue-actually paid out of his own pocket-so he could confirm the bullets that killed Williams were fired by the cops while Williams had his hands up in surrender.
Nygma had bounded out of the copter like some fashion-challenged Frankenstein with the unkempt hair of a mad scientist.
The hair was long and thick, Indian red peppered with a few strands of brown; he'd felt the ridiculous impulse to brush it for him just to feel it under his fingers.
He carried a folded raincoat on top of a weather beaten brown briefcase so full of papers he couldn't fasten the clasp, but he was superbly professional; his findings were so thorough the detective who fired the fatal shots struck a plea bargain, the city paid extensive damages to the boy's mother, and the case never went to trial.
Now here was Nygma again, eight months later, testifying for the defense.
Harvey knew that private experts could work for anyone they wanted, but he still felt betrayed. He'd been so patient with him, so considerate, Harvey'd felt he'd been as outraged as he was by the first, obviously false, coroner's report in the Williams case. He seemed to care about the truth then; now Harvey knew his testimony could be sold to the highest bidder.
Harvey barely looked up when he came in.
He knew what Nygma was going to say, but his own forensic expert had assured him that Nygma's opinion was a load of crap.
And he'd suffer for it. Judas incarnate.
Today as he walked to he witness chair the man was nothing more than some high-priced egghead from central casing trotted out by cops to rationalize their bad behavior.
Harvey knew Nygma was only twenty-five tops, but under the courtroom lights, he looked older. And he needed to go to a Pilates perfect-posture class to cure his slouching shoulders. He was wearing a jade green suit, a ink black shirt, and a skinny bone-white tie. In the months since he'd known him the bags under Nygma's eyes had almost doubled. If he had spiky hair instead of the mad-scientist kind he'd look like an aging eighties British punk rocker. Styles from sixties, hair from the eighties-what was the man's problem?
Hadn't anyone told him he was living in the twenty-first century?
Under direct examination, Nygma testified that he thought the police could easily be innocent citing a berry aneurism of the brain.
Innocent?!
"So to sum it up," the lawyer said, "in your professional opinion, you feel that Miss Billini-Duarte's death was not due to any action on the part of the police officers in question."
"That's correct." Nygma said turning to the jury. "In my opinion, there is a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the decedent died of natural causes."
Yeah. The sidewalk just stood up and cracked her skull open.
"Thank you for your honesty, doctor." The defense attorney favored the jury with one of his nauseatingly arrogant smiles. "No further questions."
Harvey rose from behind the plaintiff's table and approached the witness. He was going to eat him up and spit him out. "Dr. Nygma, how much are you being paid for your testimony today?"
"My fee is seven thousand dollars- for my time, not my testimony."
Harvey raised a scornful eyebrow. "A day?" He hadn't charged Harvey that much last April to do an autopsy. Maybe if he'd outbid the defense he could have recruited him for Mai's parents. "I see," he said "You work for the city of New York, correct?"
"I'm deputy chief medical examiner. But I'm testifying in this case in my private capacity as a physician and a forensic pathologist." Blood was in the water and he was the shark.
"In your role for the city, isn't it important to have a good relationship with the police?"
He crossed his legs, unfazed.
Harvey noticed that his suit jacket had been patched. What? Couldn't afford a new suit at seven thousand per? What a loser.
"Of course," he said, "but that doesn't affect my opinion."
"Doctor, are you acquainted with Dr. Victor Weedn, acting medical examiner for the state of New Jersey, and Dr. Claus Speth forensic pathologist who testified for the plaintiff in this case?"
"Indeed. They're both fine men and fine doctors."
"Doctors Weedn and Speth agree that Miss Billini-Duarte died as the result of a blow to the head. But you claim she died of natural causes- a brain aneurism. Is that right?"
"Yes. As I've just testified, a ruptured berry aneurism." Nygma shifted in his chair, which creaked under his weight. The witness box wasn't designed to accommodate someone such long legs.
Harvey hoped he was as uncomfortable in his lies as he was in his body. But there was no strain detectable in his deep, monotone voice. "My opinion is based on the material I've reviewed; the autopsy report, witness statements, and my dissection of the brain, which had been retained by the medical examiner."
"There's nothing in her medical records to indicate such a condition."
Nygma turned to the judge. "Is that a question?"
Smug prick. "I'll rephrase," Harvey said shortly. "Was there anything to suggest she suffered from this"-he cast a meaningful look at the jury-"rare condition?"
Nygma shrugged. "There probably wouldn't be."
Harvey shook his head as if he had never heard anything so outlandish. "Then isn't your opinion awfully convenient for the police? In fact aren't you handing them a gift-wrapped Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card?"
All six lawyers for the defense leaped to their feet, like cheerleaders at the big game. "Objection!" one shouted punching out his index finger in a needlessly dramatic fashion.
Harvey rolled his eyes at them. "It's just a figure of speech people."
"He's being argumentative," said another.
"A Lawyer, argumentative?" the judge grinned. "What else is new?"
Harvey started to speak but the judge waved him off.
"Overruled," he said.
"Thank you, your honor." He turned back to Nygma. "Doctor isn't it true that, in cases such as this, the testimony of the officers involved is often unreliable?"
Nygma leaned forward. "Not necessarily."
Got him!
"Really?" he brandished a document. "This is an abstract of a paper given at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences of May 1998, based on a study of thirty-eight police takedown death cases. It concludes that pathologists should not rely on police testimony in such cases because it's often inaccurate, possibly due to stress or simple dishonesty. Are you familiar with this paper?"
"I believe so." Was Nygma winking at him?
"Didn't you write it, Doctor?" How can he be so unruffled? I've nailed him.
"You're missing the point," Nygma deadpanned. "In those cases, the police testimony conflicted with the science. Here, it doesn't."
Harvey turned on him, hair flying theatrically. "Do you expect this jury to believe that she just happened to die while she was being arrested? What does your science say about that?"
Nygma tapped his fingers idly on the railing, the first sign of anger. "It's not a coincidence," he said, his voice still at an icy monotone. "The bursting of a natural aneurism can be brought on by emotional stress or physical exertion, like getting caught shoplifting and struggling with the police."
Damn. Juries didn't like it when moderately innocent lawyers called their expert witnesses names, which is what he was severely tempted to do, that last from Nygma was a point to the defense.
"Dr. Nygma," He said, recovering, "two of your collogues have testified that Miss Billini-Duarte suffered a subdural hemorrhage which is nearly always indicative of blunt force trauma. Are they lying?"
Nygma tapped his temple, tilting his head to the side.
If I'm lucky, he's having an aneurism of his own.
"Not at all. Without fully dissecting the brain, it was an easy mistake." He addressed the jury in a gentle voice, a young Mister Rogers addressing his beloved neighbors. "An aneurism is like a very small balloon. When this one burst, the blood flowed through the very thin arachnoid layer, which is in the inner membrane covering the brain, to the outer dura covering, creating a subdural hemorrhage from natural causes. It true that most subdural hemorrhages are due to trauma. This one wasn't." To demonstrate, Nygma formed a ball with his cupped lavender-gloved hands and then opened the top as though they were hinged at the pinkies.
Damn, Harvey thought. He's becoming taller in the witness stand. More authoritative-And the jury is starting to believe him!
"In addition," Nygma continued, "When the top of the skull was removed at autopsy, blood leaking from the postmortem incisions pooled inside the lower part of the skull, making it look like an even larger subdural bleed. It could easily be mistaken for a traumatic injury, but it's actually consistent with the officers' testimony that the victim's head never struck the ground."
"In your opinion." Harvey supplemented, watching uncertainty cloud the jurors' faces. If that self-centered money-grubbing stooge persuaded them-
"An opinion," Nygma said, quirking an eyebrow. "Which is backed by the vomitus the medical examiner found on the victim's clothing. Vomiting is a classic sign of a berry aneurism."
Harvey felt his blood pressure spike. His hair grazed wetly across his cheeks.
The coprophagiac* was twisting the girl's suffering to let the cops off the hook. "That vomit," he said, "is evidence of the trauma six policemen inflicted on a one-hundred-and-three-pound girl. Or didn't you read Dr. Weedn's report?"
"I did. What he failed to note was that the vomitus recovered from her jacket sleeve contained eggs, tomatoes, and tortillas."
"Exactly. What the victim ate for breakfast."
"Counselor," Nygma said, condescension dripping from the word, "according to her family, Miss Billini-Duarte at ten-thirty a.m., if she'd vomited as a result of the arrest four hours later, the food would be mostly digested. It was not. This is proof that the vomiting preceded the arrest. The girl died of natural causes. That's what science tells us."
Harvey shot a glance at the jury. They believe him. He felt sick, cold. Counterattack-But how?
"Dr. Nygma," he said, "apart from all this suspect speculation; you don't have any solid evidence about what happened to Miss Billini-Duarte, do you?"
He leaned back, looking maddeningly comfortable.
Harvey envisioned him with a pipe and slippers.
"The body always tells the story," he said. "Not only about how people died but how hey lived."
He felt a shiver of fear. Never mind that, he's an arrogant jerk. Just finish your cross.
"Come on, Doctor, now you're telling us you can read a body like some psychic with tea leaves?"
Idiot! Never ask a question you can't answer. What the fuck am I doing? "Go ahead, enlighten us. What could you know about the death of Maidali Billini-Duarte that hasn't been covered by two years' worth of investigation?"
"For one thing," he said, "she was a gang member."
Harvey heard a gasp behind him. *Ms. Duarte de Billini sat with her face covered by her hands, sobbing.
"The evidence is in the autopsy photos," Nygma went on. "Miss Billini-Duarte had a pachuco cross."
Harvey breathed an internal sigh of relief. "You mean a crucifix? A religious symbol?"
Now Nygma stared directly at the jurors. "A simple homemade cross with three small dashes on top, It's a gang sign, often made with ink or ashes. Hers also had a fourth mark on the lower right side." His voice lowered. The jury leaned forward to listen. "This indicates heroin addiction. In certain gangs, it's a badge of honor. It's usually a prison tattoo, by the way."
Harvey felt dizzy. He saw *Mr. Billini-Cabral, his face ashen, lead his wife from the room. They looked like a pair of children caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Nygma had transformed their angelic little girl into a shoplifting drug-addicted gangbanger. And her parents had known it all along. "Move to strike," Harvey said tonelessly.
Lost- I've lost.
A defense lawyer was on his feet. "Counsel opened the door when he had Miss Billini-Duarte's mother testify about her child's spotless record."
The judge nodded. "He sure did."
The others in the room, Mai's friends and the friends of the cops, sat silently for a moment and then began to talk, heedless of the judge's gavel.
Only Nygma was still, sitting in the witness box like a king on his throne, or, Harvey thought, like my executioner.
"No further questions," Harvey whispered, the voice at the back of his mind cackling, like the crackling of a summer bonfire.
xxXxx
*An extremly effeminate male or butch female; also a homosexual . Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code of 1871 outlawed homosexual practices; a 175er is an individual who violated this paragraph. Many were charged with acting contrary to designated gender roles and were prosecuted along 175ers, thus expanding the term. Two Face, or Harv (Big Bad Harv) is teasing Harvey using lawyer jargon. He went to law school too; he'd know what it means.
*One who feeds on excrement.
*Mai's mom's name using Dominican Republic hyphenation
* Mai's dad's name using Dominican Republic hyphenation
xxXxx
If it seems OOC, TELL me and I shall try to fix it, IF I feel like it. Otherwise I'll just ignore you. ^_^
Also, as I absolutely loathe authors who lack the decency to inform their readers of anticipated pairings as they can diminish disinterested reader's fiction appreciation, I shall notify you now. This is...:drum roll: JOYGASM (Two Face x Riddler), strange name, strange shipping, so I guess the shoe fits: shrugs:. You don't like it, I'll live, this is a gift fic for a buddy who's crazy for the couple.
xxXxx
big fan!!!!:Lol, Thanks! As this is a present, the number of chapters must be significant. My babe was born on the thirty-first, therefore there will be 31 chapters. Clever, eh? :rolls eyes at own "brilliance":