Everyone knows now. He won the case, proved his innocence. He whistled up the Daredevil to testify in court, and all the world saw them together. Legally, nobody knows who the Daredevil is. But still. Everyone knows, in Hell's Kitchen, at least.
They show it in small ways. Gino from the Italian place on 43rd street, whose fifteen-year-old niece was cornered in a dark alleyway, always piles his plate too high when he and Foggy come in. Marie from the supermarket, whose husband would have bled out in the street, always claims that he's given her too much, then slips a few too many greenbacks into his wallet. When he walks slowly back to his apartment at the end of the day, for a blind man running would be suspicious, people move out of his path as if slowing him for a moment would be a sin, and the traffic stops dead just before he crosses the road. When he hears his cane tap as he comes into church, the old man confessing stops short and leaves, for he'd rather see Purgatory than hurt the man who saved his grandson from the gangs. This is, of course, all simple rumour and hearsay. Matthew Murdock is an ordinary man.
If he weren't blind, you'd swear that he sighed when they did these things. If it were possible for a blind man to smell how much food is on a plate, to divine the worth of a banknote with a touch, to read hastily-mouthed conversations from the other side of the room, then Matthew Murdock could. But that is impossible. Matthew Murdock is an ordinary man.
He goes out in the dead of night, beats bad men senseless, then calls them an ambulance. He's not a killer, you see. Anyway, he's no fool. The healthcare system can fuck them over in ways even the Daredevil can't manage. Some of them, the ones now in town, or who don't believe that a blind man could be a warrior, go to Nelson & Murdock and ask for help. They are sent packing, and wonder why. After all, Matthew Murdock is an ordinary man.
They don't know if he's a man or a monster, if he's truly blind or not, but they do know this much. He might be a monster, but he's their monster. He might be blind, but so is justice. He might be the Devil, but the only soul he's ever stained is his own. Matt Murdock tells them no, their devil is a monster, and they shouldn't think him such a good person, but what does he know? Matthew Murdock is an ordinary man.
Devil or no, they know the truth. No children have died in Hell's Kitchen for three months. There are half as many druggies and crackheads on the streets as there were a year ago. The Russian mafia have barely got a foothold in New York, where they would have taken over in months without him. Nobody is quite sure how. The great and the good lay the blame on the police, on the Avengers, on every hero in the city but him. He scares them. They don't understand how a mortal man, with no powers beyond vision, can do more in an evening than a real, fashionable superhero can in a month. Matthew Murdock, after all, is an ordinary man.
He's never asked anything of them.
He never will.
They don't care.
They never have.
The Devil will have his due, whether he wills it or not.
